


Fixed Links Circumnavigate

by paperstorm



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Hockey, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Angst, Fandom Trumps Hate, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Steve Rogers, Prompt Fill, Romance, Serious Injuries, Sorry I know that's a million AU tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2019-11-07 05:29:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17954450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm
Summary: Steve’s eyes stay glued to Bucky on the television, and he tries to be happy for him. He tries, with everything he’s got in him, not to feel like in a split second, in 10 little words – the Pittsburgh Penguins are proud to select forward James Barnes – that he just lost Bucky forever.Bucky is drafted into the NHL. Steve loves him in secret, and from a distance. An accident ends Bucky's career when it's barely started, and Steve is left to pick up the pieces.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kalika999 (kalika_999)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalika_999/gifts).



> My second auction fill for Marvel Trumps Hate 2018! My lovely bidder gave this plot to me.
> 
> Title is from the song Turn by Great Big Sea

A body flies into the corner, chasing after both Bucky and the puck, and crashes wildly into him, sandwiching Bucky into the boards with a crunch that Steve can hear even from the very back of the arena. The boards wobble, giving to absorb the impact, and Steve winces. Bucky’s fine. He’s always fine. He rights himself and skates off in the direction of the play as the player who checked him moves with the puck toward the other end of the ice. One of Bucky’s teammates steals the puck back and the play switches directions again. Getting into position, the forwards fly down the ice, Bucky on the right, waiting for the pass. The crowd roars to cheer them on. The center fakes, backhands the puck to the right, and Bucky takes it on the tip of his stick and sends it quickly into the top corner of the net; the goalie stretching to catch it but not quick enough. The horn sounds and the red light goes off, and the crowd erupts. Steve jumps up and cheers with them, as Bucky celebrates with his teammates. On the screen above center ice, the cameras capture a close up of his face; smiling from ear to ear as he’s hugged by his team.  
   
Sam and Natasha whoop and high-five next to him. They’re Bucky’s friends, more than Steve’s, even though they all went to school together before Bucky moved away to play for the Bobcats. Steve sometimes suspects they find him annoying. On his other side, Peggy is still in her seat, and is filing her nails and hasn’t looked up despite the noise and the exuberance surrounding her from all angles. She doesn’t like hockey. She doesn’t like team sports in general; has all kinds of feminist ideas about cultures of male violence and pack mentality and gender pay disparity. Steve never disagrees when she goes off on tirades about it, half because she’s right, and half because he has exactly two friends on the planet and isn’t willing to lose one of them in a stupid argument that he’d lose anyway.  
   
“There’s gotta be scouts here,” Sam is saying, as the crowd settles and takes their seats and the puck is dropped at center ice. “They won’t have missed that snipe.”  
   
He elbows Steve as he says it, and Steve hums and nods in half-hearted agreement. Bucky deserves to be drafted. He  _will_ be drafted, Steve knows that. He just hasn’t made his peace with it yet, because they’ve lived their entire lives within five minutes of each other and by next year at this time Bucky could be halfway across the country. Or  _all_ the way across the country. There are teams in Arizona and California and western Canada. Vancouver is a long flight from JFK. Over six hours – Steve checked, once, because it and L.A. are the farthest cities from New York that have NHL teams. If Bucky were picked by the Islanders, he’d stay in Brooklyn, but he won’t be. He’ll be a top pick and the Islanders gave up their first round pick in a trade last week. Steve follows it all a lot closer than even Bucky knows, but not for good reasons. He’d been lucky that Bucky was taken by the junior team in Dix Hills. It’s just an hour’s drive away so Bucky comes home a lot, to visit his family. Steve won’t get that lucky twice.  
   
Bucky knows they’re at this game, so after his team clocks the win the four of them wait for him around the back of the arena. They aren’t alone. A crowd of teenage girls waits as well, talking and giggling excitedly amongst themselves. One is breathlessly discussing how hot a nameless  _he_ is, and Steve knows who they’re talking about.  
   
“Barnes got himself a fan club.” Sam stares at them, clearly hoping to catch an eye or two, but none of them even look over. He isn’t the object of their mission.  
   
“Jealous?” Natasha asks. Her hair is pink, this week, and if the uneven ends are anything to go by, she cut it herself again.  
   
“Obviously,” Sam returns. “What do you think, if I go over there and tell them I could get them pictures of him as a kid, would one of them date me?”  
   
“You wanna start a relationship with a puck bunny who likes Barnes more than you right from the get-go?”  
   
“Sexist,” Peggy comments. She’s texting, and doesn’t look up from her phone to make the accusation.  
   
“Whatever.” Natasha looks embarrassed anyway, but Steve is the only one who notices.  
   
The door finally opens, and players start coming out; showered and back in their suits and ties. The girls react, and one does run over and leap into an enormous guy’s arms, kissing him exaggeratedly on the mouth, but most still haven’t acquired their target. It’s another few minutes before Bucky emerges, and Steve thinks the shrieking could probably be heard from space. He grinds his teeth and hates it as Bucky smiles at them, suave and charming, and goes over to sign autographs.  
   
“He’s on a fucking junior team in the suburbs,” Steve grumbles, mostly to himself. “He’s not fucking Justin Bieber.”  
   
“Justin Bieber?” Sam repeats with a snicker.  
   
“Aww, Stevie’s jealous too?” Natasha reaches over to ruffle his hair, and Steve shrugs her off.  
   
“Don’t call me that.”  
   
Bucky is the only one Steve allows to call him that. And Steve is jealous. Just not of Bucky.  
   
What might be an entire geologic age later, Bucky finally manages to pry himself away from his groupies and comes over. His suit is grey, and checked, and his tie matches the clear, tropical ocean blue of his eyes. His hair is still wet from the shower, tousled effortlessly. There’s a bruise blooming on his jaw from being elbowed during the second period. The guy got a penalty for that, and Bucky scored again on the power play.  
   
“My man.” Sam greets him with their secret handshake.  
   
Natasha and Peggy hug him in turn, Natasha talking about the game and Peggy begrudgingly admitting Bucky is talented even if the sport itself is still a waste of time. Bucky laughs with them, and God, Steve had missed his laugh. It’s been almost two months, this time, since they’ve seen each other. Steve hangs back a bit, and lets the others soak up the sunshine that is Bucky’s presence; feeling, as on some level he always does, both sad that he has to share Bucky with the world, and like he doesn’t quite deserve the pieces of him that he does get. He’s known Bucky longer, and knows him  _better_ , than they do, but Steve would be selfish to want to keep Bucky all to himself when his spark is too bright to be stuck forever in a walk up in Brooklyn with Steve.  
   
When Bucky finally turns to him, his eyes sparkle, and Steve is okay with kidding himself that they sparkle just for him. He’s also okay with believing the lie that when Bucky comes over to hug him, it’s softer and tighter and longer than the way he’d hugged the others.  
   
“Hey, Stevie,” Bucky says to him, breath warm against Steve’s ear. “Missed you.”  
   
“Me too,” Steve answers, breathless, intimate like they’re lovers and they aren’t and he needs to get a grip on himself.  
   
“You guys heading back tonight?” Bucky asks, and it takes Steve a moment to realize Bucky isn’t talking directly to him.  
   
“I had to literally beg my mom to let me borrow the van to drive us up here,” Natasha says. “If I don’t have it back before midnight she might literally murder me and throw me in the Hudson.”  
   
“Stay longer next time? I miss you guys.” He sounds like he means it, and it hurts Steve’s heart a little. He also knows Bucky has teammates, and classmates at a new school, and a billet family, so he probably doesn’t miss them all that much. He makes friends wherever he goes; he could make friends in prison, or lost in a desert, or behind enemy lines in a war zone. Steve’s the awkward one. The one who only Bucky ever had time for, up until Peggy moved to New York from London last year and became the second person who sees something good in Steve that he’s still not entirely convinced is actually there.  
   
“My parents are going away in a few weeks,” Sam tells him. “I’ll steal their car and we’ll drive up here for the whole weekend.”  
   
“And stay where, exactly? Do you have motel money?” Natasha asks.  
   
“We can sleep in the car.”  
   
“Four of us? In your parents’ fucking Prius?”  
   
“We could pitch a tent in the park.”  
   
“In February?”  
   
Steve looks over at Bucky, and he’s smiling, soft and fond, watching them bicker. Steve believes a little more that he does really miss them.  
   
“Can we go, please?” Peggy asks, interrupting the argument. “James, I adore you, but it’s a million below out here and my fingers are going to fall off if we stay here one more minute.”  
   
Sam points at Natasha and says, “to be continued.”  
   
“Oh, lovely, Steve and I will get to listen to you two flirt all the way home.” Peggy rolls her eyes.  
   
It’s hard to tell under his dark skin, but Steve thinks Sam blushes.  
   
“We’ll see you soon. Keep being brilliant,” Peggy tells Bucky, hugging him again. Sam and Natasha do the same, and they turn and make their way toward the parking lot.  
   
Steve swallows, looks at Bucky, and then looks down at his hands. “I should …”  
   
“How are things?” Bucky asks him, not waiting for Steve to finish his sentence.  
   
“Yeah. Um. Good, everything’s good.” Steve forces a smile. “Brooklyn’s not the same without you.”  
   
Bucky snorts. “That’s such a line.”  
   
“It’s fun, watching you play,” Steve says, side-stepping around Bucking calling him on what he now realizes definitely sounded like a cheesy pick-up line. “It’s good you’re not too far away.”  
   
_For now_ , he doesn’t add, because there would be no point to it.  
   
“Yeah.” Bucky frowns a little, like he’s thinking the same thing. “Hey, you … could stay. If you want. Take the train back in the morning.”  
   
Steve blinks at him and struggles to keep a dumb, hopeful grin off his face. “Really?”  
   
“Sure.” Bucky shrugs, but he returns the smile, and it’s genuine, and it makes warmth bloom in Steve’s chest. More than anything, he misses when it was just the two of them. When Bucky would happily ditch his other friends to come over and spend the afternoon at Steve’s house, because they were 12 and he would’ve rather been with Steve than anyone else and nothing had yet gotten in the way of them spending every spare minute together.  
   
“Where?”  
   
“With me.” Another shrug. “Janet won’t mind. You can camp out on the floor.”  
   
Steve nods. He’s never met Bucky’s billet family, but knows Bucky likes them. “Okay.”  
   
“Rogers!” From across the parking lot, Natasha is hanging out of the window of the van and yelling at him. “Five seconds till I’m leaving without you!”  
   
“I’m staying overnight!” Steve yells back.  
   
“Enjoy being murdered on the train!” Natasha responds, with a middle finger, and peeling out of the lot, tires squeaking on the asphalt.  
   
Bucky tosses an arm around Steve’s shoulders, and hugs him sideways. “C’mon.”  
   
“You’re sure it’s okay?” Steve asks.  
   
“Well your ride just left, so we don’t really have a choice, now, do we?” Bucky jokes. “I’m not sending you home on the train this late or you really might be murdered.”  
   
“Are there a lot of hardened criminals out here in white suburbia?” Steve pokes Bucky in the ribs.  
   
“You joke, but you haven’t seen rage until you’ve seen soccer moms at the grocery store when they’ve run out of kale chips.”  
   
“Sounds terrifying.”  
   
“It is.” Bucky squeezes him, and then lets his arm fall away, and instantly Steve wants it back. Not just because it’s snowing, and Bucky is warm.  
   
“How are things here? Really, now that they’re gone. Tell me the truth.”  
   
“Good,” Bucky answers. His eyes shine again. “I miss you guys a lot. You, more than them, obviously, although I’ll deny that if you ever repeat it. But it’s good. I like my teammates, and … I don’t know.”  
   
“Don’t know what?”  
   
They reach Bucky’s old Honda, and Steve looks at him over the top of it.  
   
“This is … it, you know?” Bucky exhales nosily and his lips curve into a small smile. “This is what I’ve been working for since I was a kid.”  
   
It leaves a lump in Steve’s throat to say it, but he does. “You’re gonna get drafted. I know it. You’re gonna be a superstar.”  
   
Bucky looks down, and gets into the car. Steve does too. Staring at the steering wheel, he says, “I hope so.”  
   
“I know so,” Steve reassures. He wants to hold it back, but can’t stop himself from adding, “I’ll be happy for you, even though it’ll take you even farther away.”  
   
“Yeah but I’ll be a millionaire,” Bucky reminds him, with a smirk. “So I can fly you out to visit me whenever you want.”  
   
“You mean that?” Steve sounds way too eager, way too attached. He’s never been any good at being funny like Natasha, or sophisticated like Peggy, or cool like Sam. He’s just a mess of awkward limbs and floppy hair and always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.  
   
But Bucky’s expression is soft as he promises, “of course I do.”  
   
*           *           *  
   
“If you steal one more fry off my plate I’m gonna retaliate,” Natasha threatens, smacking Sam’s hand away from her tray.  
   
“How?” he asks.  
   
She grins menacingly. “Wanna find out?”  
   
“Not particularly. Okay, spot me a five so I can get my own fries.”  
   
“No.” Natasha dips her finger into a blob of ketchup and flicks it at him. “You still owe me 20.”  
   
“Oh, if it’ll make you stop,” Peggy sighs, reaching into her purse and shoving a handful of bills over at Sam across the table.  
   
Sam grins. “Thanks, Pegs.”  
   
He goes off to join the line at the other end of the cafeteria. Natasha stuffs her remaining fries into her mouth, and then slings her backpack over her shoulders, and bids them farewell with a peace sign and a “later, losers” spoken around a mouthful of potatoes.  
   
Steve goes back to his sketch book. He’s holding the cover upright, so only he can see the page, as he rubs the lead of a pencil on its side to capture the fluff of Bucky’s hair. He’s been sketching Bucky since they were little, and he’s better at it than at anything else he draws. Bucky’s seen a few of them. He’d probably take out a restraining order if he knew how many there are that he hasn’t seen, that Steve keeps in a locked box under his bed. In this particular sketch, he doesn’t have Bucky’s eyes quite right. He drew them sad without meaning to, and Bucky’s almost always smiling.  
   
“Can I see?” Peggy asks.  
   
“Not this one.” Steve cringes when he realizes what that probably sounds like. “It isn’t boobs, I promise.”  
   
“I didn’t think it was.” Her brown eyes are squinted, just slightly, and they see too much when she looks at him like that, so he goes back to drawing.  
   
Bucky wears a chain with a small silver cross around his neck, so Steve adds that, tracing the shape and coloring it in. He adds lines for the hollows and contours of Bucky’s throat.  
   
“Is it him?”  
   
Steve looks up, panic running through him that he tries desperately to keep of his face. He’s not sure he manages it. “Who?”  
   
Peggy just looks at him for another moment. She nods, and doesn’t elaborate. “I’ve got calculus homework,” she says, picking up her stylish messenger bag. “I’ll see you later?”  
   
Steve can’t think of what to say as an answer, so he remains quiet and dumbfounded as she smiles sadly at him and leaves the cafeteria. A red plastic trays slams down onto the table across from him, and Steve startles and jumps far too dramatically as Sam snickers and sits. He slides the tray closer to the middle of the table, offering to share. Steve closes his sketchbook and takes a few fries, only half-listening as Sam launches into a series of complaints about his teammates on the basketball team.  
   
*           *           *  
   
The cigarette between his fingers glows in the darkness. Steve stares at it, not really seeing it or anything else, and definitely not feeling the chill like he usually would as he sits on the fire escape. So many times, countless times,  _hundreds_ of times, he’s sat out here with Bucky. Sharing a smoke, talking about nothing, like the Knicks score, and talking about everything, like their plans and their dreams and the things that were too fragile to say to anyone else. When they were about ten years old, they’d sat right here and Bucky had emphatically declared that in a decade, he’d be a famous NHL star and Steve would be a famous artist, and they’d have a fancy loft in Manhattan, and three dogs, and enough money to buy homes for his parents and Steve’s Mom so they could get out of the poorer part of Brooklyn. He’d promised Steve it would come true, and Steve had believed him. Bucky’s well on his way to it. In a way, Steve is as well. He got an acceptance letter from Tisch last week. He hasn’t told anyone that yet, not even Bucky. Steve doubts he’ll ever be famous, but he’ll be an artist. The dreams those kids had could still come true. The only part Bucky got wrong, was the part about them doing it together.  
   
“You’ve got a visitor,” his mother’s voice says, from the open window behind him.  
   
Steve looks up, and Peggy joins him, spreading a towel Sarah must have given her out on the metal grate of the fire escape and settling cross-legged onto it.  
   
“You shouldn’t smoke,” he tells him.  
   
“Neither should you.” He passes the cigarette over, and she takes it and brings it to her lips. The smoke she blows out swirls in circular patterns in front of them before it floats away into the night air. “Finish your calculus?”  
   
“Can I just say it?” she asks, ignoring his question. “Because I think someone needs to, and we might be old and gray before you ever do.”  
   
“Say what?” He already knows, though. He’d been anxious about it all afternoon, and now he’s strangely calm, because it’s already happened so there’s nothing he can do about it now.  
   
“You’re in love with him.” She takes another drag on the cigarette and then holds it out for Steve to take.  
   
He doesn’t take it. He sighs and leans back against the brick, tipping his head backwards and looking up at the city smog above him that obscures the stars. He’d noticed, in Dix Hills, how much clearer the night sky was.  
   
“Steve,” she says softly.  
   
“Yeah.”  
   
“Yeah, you heard me, or yeah, I’m right?”  
   
He licks his lips. “Yeah, you’re right.”  
   
She moves in closer, shuffling up right next to him so she can rest her head on his shoulder. Her chestnut curls tickle his neck. “How long?”  
   
“Forever,” Steve answers honestly. It’s the truth, and it’s painful to admit because Steve knows how pathetic it is. Bucky has always been everything. His protector from bullies on the playground, the one he could tell secrets to, the one Steve looked up to, the person who gave Steve whatever semblance of self-worth he has, because he’s always, always thought that if someone like Bucky stayed his best friend since they were in kindergarten, it must mean there’s some good in Steve. He must be good for  _something_ , if he’s worthy of Bucky.  
   
“What does forever mean?”  
   
“Not when I was a baby, I guess. But as long as I can remember. Before I knew what the fuck love even is. I can’t … Peggy, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love him.” The words tumble out of his mouth, and a tear or two comes with them. Steve angrily wipes them off his face.  
   
“It isn’t so impossible that he could love you back,” she says, gentle.  
   
Steve hears it as placating. “He doesn’t.”  
   
“How do you know?”  
   
“Because he  _doesn’t_. And I want him to get drafted. It’s all he’s wanted since we were kids. He was talking about playing in the NHL when we were six years old. It’s his dream and he deserves it and I want it for him.”  
   
“But you think it means you’ll lose him,” Peggy finishes.  
   
“I think it because it’s true. He could end up in Florida, or Ohio, or fucking Canada. It’s not like I’ll never see him again but it won’t be the same, and I fucking hate myself for even saying that, because he’s my best friend and it’s his dream. Who else would be that selfish?”  
   
“You’re not selfish.”  
   
“Everything I said sounds pretty selfish to me.”  
   
Peggy goes silent. She stays leaning against him, and Steve gets his arm out from under her and wraps both around her, just to have something solid to hold onto. She smells like flowers, and she’s small in his arms.  
   
“I’m sorry,” she says eventually.  
   
“Not your fault,” Steve mumbles.  
   
“That’s not why I’m sorry.”  
   
“I’ve never …” Steve takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, resting his forehead against her hair. “I’ve never said it out loud, before.”  
   
“Does it feel better, now that you have?”  
   
He shakes his head. “Please don’t tell Sam and Nat.”  
   
“I wouldn’t. You know I wouldn’t.”  
   
“Thank you.”  
   
*           *           *  
   
On June 15th, Steve walks across a stage in a cap and gown and accepts a diploma from the Principal, shaking her hand and posing for a picture. He throws his hat into the air along with everyone else when Daniel Zalenski has crossed the stage and their graduating class is announced. His Mom is in the audience. His friends find him as all the other students leave their seats, milling around to locate their own friends and family members. Sam fist-bumps him, Peggy hugs him, Natasha enthusiastically articulates how happy she is the ceremony is over with more swear words than were necessary to communicate it. All Steve’s life, he’d thought Bucky would be here with him for this moment, but he’s graduating from a different high school an hour away.  
   
On June 19th, he takes Peggy as his date to their prom. She looks beautiful in a flowy powder blue dress. Natasha has been talking all year about boycotting the prom as an act of protest against society, but decides at the last minute instead to fashion a dress out of artfully arranged plastic garbage bags and let Sam take her. She dyes her hair in rainbow stripes for the occasion. Sam is smart enough to keep his opinion on it to himself. Steve dances with his friends, and laughs, and rolls his eyes with Peggy when Sam and Natasha end up making out in the corner of the ballroom after drinking enough that they definitely won’t remember it in the morning.  
   
On June 20th, with a hangover headache that is his only excuse for the reckless abandon that briefly overcomes him, his finger hovers over Bucky’s contact in his iPhone. He stares at it, trying to convince himself to press it and call him and confess. He’s in love with Bucky. He has, like he told Peggy, been in love with Bucky since before he can remember. And their lives are about to go in two completely opposite directions, taking them further away from each other than they’ve ever been, and it’s now or never. It’s Steve’s do or die moment, and in the end, he can’t.  
   
On June 22nd, Steve watches live coverage of the NHL draft with his Mom. Bucky is picked third overall, by Pittsburgh. It could have been worse. Pittsburgh isn’t  _that_ far away. He tries very hard to convince himself of that, as he watches Bucky walk confidently up onto the stage in his navy suit and accept a Penguins jersey from the owner, pulling it on and shaking hands and posing as dozens of cameras flash. He looks so happy. Eyes crinkled, smile blinding. It’s everything he’s ever wanted. Sarah claps next to him, just as proud of Bucky as if he were her own son. She’s always considered him part of their family. Steve’s eyes stay glued to Bucky on the television, and he tries to be happy for him. He tries, with everything he’s got in him, not to feel like in a split second, in ten little words –  _the Pittsburgh Penguins are proud to select forward James Barnes_ – that he just lost Bucky forever.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve drags his pencil over the thick paper, coloring in shadows to shade the curves on the hips and legs of the figure he’s sketching. Someone coughs next to him in the circle. He thinks her name is Dana, but he can never remember. There are so many students in his classes, and he’s trying to make friends, trying to meet new people and be up for new experiences like he’s supposed to, but he finds himself staying mostly silent and retreating too readily back to his dorm room and passing up offers to attend parties or tag along when his classmates take trips to the MoMA on Saturdays. Steve looks back up at the model they’re sketching today, standing on a platform in the middle of the room with easels circled around her. She’s naked, and Steve finds he can’t look her in the eye while he stares at her body to replicate it on the paper in front of him. It feels too personal. If he thinks of her as arms and legs and feminine curves, he can sketch her and not think anything of it. If he considers her as a person, with thoughts and feelings and people who love her, the whole activity feels exploitive.  
   
“Her stomach is too flat.” His frizzy-haired professor leans in behind Steve, reaching out a finger to point to the middle section of the figure he’s drawing. “And too square. She’s softer than this, this looks like a man’s body.”  
   
“Sorry,” Steve mutters. He uses the side of the pencil lead to round it out a little more, but he makes it stick out too far and has to rub an eraser over the page to fix it. Everything ends up smudged and it looks much worse than before he tried to fix it. “I’m not good at this.”  
   
“That’s why you’re in school, Mr. Rogers. You’ll get better.” Leaning further still, the professor squints behind her glasses at the top section of Steve’s sketch. “She doesn’t have a face.”  
   
Steve chews at the inside of his lip. He’d sketched the rough outline of her head but hasn’t given her facial features yet. He was sort of hoping he wouldn’t have to – if the assignment is to learn to draw the contours of the human form, he doesn’t see why he should have to give her hair and eyes and lips.  
   
“I’m shit at drawing faces,” he lies.  
   
“I’ve seen the drawings you submitted with your application. I know that isn’t true.”  
   
Steve swears internally. “Um. Female faces, I mean. I’m used to … my, uh, brother, was usually my subject. So I’m used to drawing him.”  
   
She hums, like she doesn’t believe him, says, “keep practicing,” and moves onto the next student.  
   
Steve closes his eyes for a moment, tries to steady his breathing, and then puts his pencil back to the page and tries to concentrate on the thin oval of her eyes and the round shape of her face. Every time he draws a face since he’s been here, no matter how hard he tries it comes out looking like Bucky. He gives them a square jaw and round eyes and sweetly bowed lips. He’d been absent-mindedly drawing two-day stubble on what was supposed to be a child once, before he’d realized what he was doing and hastily erased it before anyone could notice and come to the conclusion that he’s some sort of pervert.  
   
He leans to the left a little and looks up, taking in her brown eyes and heavy eyebrows and flat features. She catches his eye, smiling at little, and Steve blushes and looks away and nearly drops his pencil. He hides back behind his easel, and quickly sketches a rudimentary, generic set of vaguely feminine facial features into the blank space he’d left. He over-exaggerates plump lips and long eyelashes and shades in blush on the cheeks even though she isn’t really wearing make-up. He’d rather get a bad grade on the assignment than accidentally draw Bucky again.  
   
*           *           *  
   
“You should have seen the way he was looking at me when I brought up Finland and Sweden.” Peggy rolls her eyes and sips her coffee. “Americans are genuinely stupid sometimes. There are countries in Europe where democratic forms of socialism work perfectly, but all anyone ever brings up when you mention that here is Venezuela. I will never understand the fetish this country has for a broken form of capitalism that is destroying your very own people, not to mention the planet.”  
   
“Mhm.” Steve isn’t paying particularly close attention to her rant about her political science professor, with whom she has been sparring on nearly a daily basis. Secretly Steve thinks she’s right, but is also going to get herself into some serious trouble if she keeps baiting him. She’s never been able to hold herself back when she knows she’s right. He’s staring at his phone, scrolling through the ESPN app he’d downloaded back in September as a way of keeping up to date with what Bucky is up to. They don’t talk much these days. He gets texts in the middle of the night when Bucky is on an airplane and can’t sleep. He gets the occasional phone call or FaceTime when Bucky has a rare day off. Other than that, he has to stay informed of his best friend’s life through selfies with his new teammates on his Instagram, and articles written by sports journalists about the talented rookie who might be the best thing to happen to the Pittsburgh franchise since Sidney Crosby.  
   
“You’re not listening to me, are you?” Peggy asks.  
   
“Yeah,” Steve answers, and too-late realizes it doesn’t make sense as a response to her question.  
   
“Steven.”  
   
“Sorry.” Steve shuts his phone screen off and puts it down on the table. He looks up at her, finding her brown eyes under a deep frown. “What were you saying? The prof again, right? He sounds like an asshole.”  
   
“He is an asshole.” Peggy lips her licks and sighs. “But it’s nothing I can’t handle. Tell me about you.”  
   
“What about me?”  
   
“You could start with why you’re on your phone instead of listening while your friend is talking.”  
   
“I said I was sorry.”  
   
“I didn’t ask you to be sorry. I asked you to tell me what’s going on.”  
   
“Nothing’s going on.” Steve looks away, and has to bite back the surge of annoyance that takes over in his chest. She doesn’t know what it’s like, and he’s getting tired of sympathy. It’s not like Bucky is dead. He’s only a few hours away, and they have cellphones, and on some level Steve has known for years this was going to happen. It’s his own fault he never bothered to prepare for it. People shouldn’t feel sorry for him.  
   
“I miss him, too,” Peggy says softly.  
   
“It’s fine. Tell me about the prof.”  
   
Instead, she reaches out and cards her fingers through his hair. “I know it’s not the same.”  
   
“It’s  _fine_ , Pegs,” he snaps.  
   
The look she gives him in response is too kind, too understanding, too empathetic. It gets under Steve’s skin and he wants to scream.  
   
“I can’t, okay?” he says, and his voice comes out in a pathetic croak. “Can’t talk about it right now. Just. Tell me about the asshole prof. Please?”  
   
She sighs again, but she nods, and launches back into her story, just with slightly less fervor this time. She isn’t indignant about what had happened in her morning class anymore, she’s just placating him. Going through the motions of telling a story so Steve doesn’t have to think about how he’d spent his own morning struggling not to draw Bucky when he was supposed to be drawing a naked woman. Steve can’t decide which is worse.  
   
*           *           *  
   
His roommate is snoring loudly across the small room. Steve shifts uncomfortably in his twin bed, trying to find a position that doesn’t hurt every spot on his body that’s touching the stiff mattress. He’s struggled on and off with insomnia for most of his life, but it’s been worse since he left home. Some days it feels like he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in the nearly three months since he’s been here. He rolls over again, onto his back, and covers his face with his hands. Tonight, it’s especially bad. It’s almost three in the morning and he hasn’t had a minute of sleep yet. His 8:30 class is going to be hell. Removing his hands from his face, a sudden burst of blue light from the nightstand beside him makes him look up. His phone is lit up. Steve pushes up onto an elbow to squint at it, the bright light burning his eyes as they try to adjust to it. It’s Bucky.  
   
Steve’s heart races as he reaches for it, sliding his thumb along the bottom of the screen to answer to call quietly, ducking under his blanket so he won’t wake his roommate – who is not a fan of Steve’s inability to sleep normal hours. Steve has a suspicion the guy has put in a request to transfer to a different room, and is pissed that it hasn’t happened yet.  
   
“Hey, Buck,” he answers.  
   
“Steve.” Bucky’s voice is breathy. “Fuck, I didn’t think you’d be awake.”  
   
“Then why did you call?”  
   
“I don’t know. Thought I’d take a chance, I guess. Why are you up?”  
   
“Can’t sleep.”  
   
“Me neither.”  
   
“I … hold on, okay?” As quietly as he can, Steve gets up, slips a pair of shoes and a hoodie on, and tiptoes out of his room into the common area near the elevators. The lights are low, and the floor is deserted. A few leftover coffee cups and fast food wrappers litter one of the coffee tables, and someone had left a notebook on a couch. Steve sits in an armchair in the corner, curling up in it with his legs tucked up against his chest. He brings the phone back up to his ear. “Okay, I’m back.”  
   
“Where’d you go?”  
   
“Just moved out of my room. Greg yells at me if I wake him up.”  
   
“Why can’t you sleep?”  
   
“I don’t know. Too much caffeine, maybe,” Steve says, and it’s only halfway a lie. “You?”  
   
“I miss you,” Bucky’s voice answers in an intimate whisper.  
   
Whether he’s saying that’s the reason he can’t sleep, or just saying it as a new topic, Steve doesn’t know, and is afraid to ask. He wants so badly to say it back, but the words get caught in his throat. Instead, he says, “I’ve been watching your games, when I can. You’re doin’ so good.”  
   
“Yeah.” Bucky smiles – Steve can hear it in his voice. “It’s pretty amazing, being here. Playing with all these guys, and having my name in headlines and shit. The fans are insane, I’m like. A star. Like I’m a celebrity or something. That part is weird as shit, but. Kinda cool, also.”  
   
“Are the guys nice?”  
   
“Yeah, they’re great. I scored twice against Carey Price last week, that was pretty fucking amazing.”  
   
“I know. I was watching that game.”  
   
“Aww, my number one fan,” Bucky jokes.  
   
Steve doesn’t need to say how right he is about that. “Think you might come home soon?”  
   
“I don’t know. We might have a couple days off at the end of the month, but I don’t know if there will be practices in there.”  
   
“For Christmas, at least?”  
   
“Fuck, of course. We’ll get at least a week. Nothing like Christmas in New York.”  
   
“You haven’t experienced Christmas in Pittsburgh. Maybe it’s better.”  
   
“Steve.” Bucky laughs, and Steve can picture the expression on his face. Head tilted to the side, smile wide, eyes fond and exasperated. “I’m obviously coming home for Christmas. You don’t have to act like my jealous girlfriend.”  
   
“Do you, um. Have a girlfriend?” Steve asks. No part of him wants to know the answer if it’s yes. It was bad enough last year when Bucky was the star of a junior team on Long Island, with high school girls fawning all over him. Bucky in a new city, the star rookie of an NHL team, suddenly with money in his bank account and fame and notoriety; Steve hates the thought of the options that will be at his fingertips now. If he’d stayed in Brooklyn with Steve, he might one day have fallen in love with Steve out of proximity, even though he’s always deserved better. Now, he could have anyone he wanted, and there’s no reason for him to want Steve.  
   
“No.” There’s shuffling in the background, like Bucky is moving around, or maybe laying down. “Haven’t really had time to go on dates since I’ve been here. I get offers, though.”  
   
“Yeah.” Steve’s voice is tight. “I’m sure you do.”  
   
“What about you? Any hot artsy chicks?”  
   
Steve shrugs. Of course there are beautiful girls in his program, but none that would ever give him the time of day even if he wanted it from them. “I guess. They’re outta my league, though.”  
   
“Do they think that, or do you?”  
   
“Does it matter?”  
   
“Guess not.” More muffled noises, and then a loud thunk and the distant sound of Bucky swearing. He laughs as his voice comes back. “Sorry, dropped the phone.”  
   
“What are you doing?”  
   
“Trying to rebandage my wrist with one hand and the phone between my ear and my shoulder. Wasn’t really working.”  
   
“What happened to your wrist?” Steve asks urgently.  
   
“Just a strain. Got bent kinda weird in a hit the other day. It’s fine, Mom,” Bucky says, soothing and exasperated again. There’s such affection underneath it, though. Or, at least Steve thinks there is. There’s always the possibility he’s imagining it because he wants it to be there.  
   
“Please be careful.”  
   
“I’m in the big leagues, now, kiddo. Will you still love me once all my teeth have been knocked outta my head?”  
   
“No,” Steve says bluntly, even though it’s a complete lie. “So keep them in.”  
   
“I’ll do my best.” Bucky exhales, and sounds reluctant as he says, “I should try to sleep. 6AM is gonna come really quickly.”  
   
“Yeah. Me too,” Steve admits, regretfully.  
   
“Maybe you could come visit me, soon?” Bucky asks. There’s something shy in the way he says it, and Steve’s heart skips a beat. “Just for a weekend? I could pay for your ticket and a hotel and stuff, if … I know you’re on a scholarship. Sorry, I don’t wanna make it sound like …”  
   
Steve shakes his head. “It’s okay. You’ve got money right now and I don’t, it’s … no sense being embarrassed about it, right? It’s just a fact.”  
   
“One day,” Bucky promises him, “you’re gonna be a famous artist, and you’ll be offering to pay for me to come visit you in Paris or Milan.”  
   
“I’ll come visit you,” Steve says. He doesn’t bother refuting Bucky’s claim about his future. It would lead to an argument, and Steve doesn’t want to end their first conversation in weeks that way.  
   
“Good. Bring the gang, if they wanna come. I miss them, too.”  
   
Steve swallows over the lump that rises in his throat. He should have been expecting that. Of course Bucky misses his  _friends_ , not just Steve. It was stupid for him to assume otherwise. “I will.”  
   
“Good,” Bucky repeats. “Okay, I’ll … we’ll talk soon?”  
   
“Good luck, tomorrow. Against Washington.”  
   
“Yeah. Thanks, Steve.”  
   
“Goodnight, Bucky.”  
   
“Night, Stevie.”  
   
Steve stares at his phone screen for a long time after the call is disconnected. He keeps hoping maybe it will ring again. He doesn’t purposely fall asleep curled up in the chair. Hours later, he wakes with a start at the sound of doors opening and closing and people laughing in the hallway. He jerks out of his slumber, looking around to find people eyeing him warily as they pass. His roommate is waiting for the elevator at the other end of the room, and they briefly make eye contact before Greg rolls his eyes and turns back to his friend. His lips move in a conversation that Steve can’t hear, although he has a pretty good idea of what’s likely being said. He looks down, finding his phone still clutched in his right hand; the skin on his fingers turned white from having been squeezing it as he slept.  
   
*           *           *  
   
At the end of November, he does visit. Peggy has a big project due the next week so she stays home, but Sam and Natasha and Steve manage to find cheap last-minute train tickets and Bucky insists on booking them two rooms at a hotel downtown. He can’t get them tickets to a game on such short notice, but Steve couldn’t care less about that. They watch the Penguins beat the Leafs on the T.V. in Natasha’s hotel room, spread out together on her king-sized bed. Sam and Natasha cheer obnoxiously loudly every time Bucky’s team scores, and dance around like idiots when Bucky redirects a deflected slapshot into the net halfway through the second period. Steve laughs at them, and films it to send to Bucky later. He can never pull his eyes away when Bucky’s on the ice. The smooth, elegant way he skates, the confidence when he’s got the puck on his stick, the way he throws his weight around, driving guys who must be twice as heavy as he is into the boards. He’s mesmerizing, and it’s lucky for Steve that his other friends aren’t as perceptive as Peggy is. If she were here, she would definitely notice the way he’s staring.  
   
Bucky takes them out on Saturday night, to a bar where some of the younger, single players hang out after home games. He’s such a presence in the place; commanding the attention of the entire bar as soon as he walks in. He signs autographs and takes pictures and politely flirts back when gorgeous women approach him to coyly tell him they’re big fans while arching their backs and playing too obviously with their hair. Sam found someone pretty to dance with, so he isn’t jealous this time. Natasha is at the bar, with her pumpkin orange hair and her beat-up leather jacket, challenging grown men to arm wrestling matches for money. Steve sits on a barstool and fades into the background, watching his friends and watching the love of his life attract the attention of every age appropriate girl in the building. He is approached after a while, by a petite girl with brown curls and green eyes and freckles on her nose. She’s sweet, and she’s nice to look at, and Steve chats awkwardly with her for a few minutes before turning her down. He doesn’t do it as kindly as he could have; he gauges that after he watches her walk away looking hurt. He feels badly about it, but not badly enough to do anything to fix it.  
   
Finally, Bucky manages to pull himself away from his hordes of annoyingly adoring fans. He takes Steve’s wrist and drags him out back, to the alley behind the bar. Steve gets an up-close look at him for the first time since they’ve been here, now that they’re finally alone. Bucky is as beautiful as ever. His hair is a little longer than it was the last time Steve saw him in person; the brown strands shaggy and long enough to tuck behind his ears. It would be so nice to run his fingers through it. Steve already knows it’s soft, from all the times they’ve shared beds over the years and he’s woken up in the morning with Bucky plastered to his side because in his sleep Bucky is a relentless snuggler. His blue eyes are as glittery as they always were, and they still crinkle at the corners when his smile lights up his whole face. He’s still tall and handsome and impressive, and it still feels like heaven when his entire attention is focused on Steve, when there’s so many better places he could be putting it. When they were kids, Steve had Bucky all to himself. Now he has to share him, and Steve still isn’t over being bitter about it.  
   
“I’m so happy you’re here,” Bucky says, sounding sincere about it. His cheeks are pink in the frigid winter air that surrounds them and turns their breath to clouds in front of their faces.  
   
“Me too,” Steve answers. He finds himself holding back, these days, when they do speak. It’s been harder, lately, to keep from blurting things out, because Steve has so little to lose, now. He’s known for most of his life that he loves Bucky, but now that they barely see each other, not that much would change if Steve confessed and Bucky decided he never wanted to speak to him again. Steve has nearly lost him already anyway. It leaves him feeling reckless; almost wanting to admit to what he’s been feeling, just to get it off his chest and blow everything up and let the fragments fall where they fall. If he loses Bucky for good, it wouldn’t be that much different than it already is. Sometimes Steve thinks maybe he should. Maybe if he found out, once and for all, that Bucky would never want him that way, he could move on.  
   
“What’s goin’ on?” Bucky asks, with a frown twisting his forehead. He moves in closer, and puts his hands on Steve’s arms.  
   
Steve shakes his head. Nerves turn his stomach to butterflies, but he can’t do it. Having even tiny pieces of Bucky is better than having none of him. “Nothing. Bars aren’t really my scene. I am happy to be here, though. It’s good to see you.”  
   
Bucky buys it. He grins and pulls Steve into a hug, and Steve clings to him so tightly. There was a time when Bucky would have seen through Steve’s excuses. He’s always been a terrible liar, and Bucky used to know him too well. He has other priorities now.  
   
*           *           *  
   
For his end-of-term project, Steve makes a wild decision to throw caution to the wind and draws Bucky. It’s the largest, most detailed drawing of him that Steve’s ever done. He gets a sheet of thick paper the size of a small area rug, and spreads it out in one of the rooms that are available for students to work in. He has to put it on the floor, because it’s too big for the tables. He hovers over it for weeks, etching from memory with pencils and charcoals. He refines the curve of Bucky’s lips, the shape of his perfect nose, his high cheekbones with hollows underneath them. The cleft of his chin, the way he holds his jaw, the gentle, masculine slope of his forehead. He spends nearly ten full days on Bucky’s eyes. He makes them sparkle, even in black and white. He uses white space to mimic their clear blue in grey tones. He draws Bucky’s hair shorter than it is now; ruffled and tousled like artful bedhead like it always was in high school, because that’s the Bucky he knows, the one he wants to bring to life on the page.  
   
He gets an A on it. He meets with his professor, after the last day of classes for his one-on-one evaluation, and she gushes about the way the face he drew seems almost to move on the page. She brings out a few of his earlier pieces for comparison, emphasizing the care and detail he put into the one of Bucky. She advises him to devote that much passion into everything he draws from now on. Steve nods and thanks her, and knows he won’t be able to take that advice. He can’t care about drawing a bowl of fruit or a tree or a naked stranger the way he cares about drawing Bucky. Sketching a lifeless bouquet of flowers on a square of drawing paper doesn’t feel important in the same way, and it never will.  
   
Steve’s art is chosen to be exhibited at the school’s holiday art show. First years are almost never chosen. Steve is terrified of it; of putting something so personal and intimately significant up on display for anyone to see. It feels like sharing Bucky with even  _more_ people than he already has to. He does it anyway. If Bucky were here, or if Steve could muster up the courage to tell him about it, Bucky would tell him to be brave.  
   
He invites Peggy to the show. She comes, and brings Natasha and Sam with her. Steve hadn’t known she was going to do that. He feels the blood drain out of his face as he watches them approach, and then has to watch their faces almost in slow motion as they take in his piece. Peggy’s face goes instantly sad. Sam and Natasha take a minute, confused frowns on their foreheads, before they both come to the same understanding, at nearly the same time. He’s been trying desperately for years to keep it from them, and within the space of about 20 seconds, they both just figured it out.  
   
“Oh,” Natasha says, softly. She covers her mouth, just for a moment. Then she shakes the sympathetic expression from her face, and smiles at him. “It’s gorgeous, Steve. Definitely the best you’ve ever done.”  
   
“He is nowhere near that good looking in real life,” Sam jokes, clapping Steve on the shoulder. “He doesn’t need you inflating his ego bigger than it already is.”  
   
“Yeah.” Steve isn’t agreeing, he just doesn’t know what to say.  
   
Natasha leans over to kiss him on the cheek. “Fucking incredible,” she says, and then she drags Peggy off to check out some of the other artists’ work. Peggy shoots Steve an apologetic look over her shoulder as she’s pulled away.  
   
Steve’s whole body is overheated, and his skin crawls like it's covered in invisible spiders.  
   
Sam puts an arm around him and squeezes. “She’s right. It’s amazing.”  
   
“Please don’t tell him,” Steve mumbles.  
   
Sam rubs his upper arm and squeezes again. “I won’t.”  
   
*           *           *


	3. Chapter 3

George holds up his glass, heartily wishing everyone around the table a Merry Christmas, and their glasses all meet in the center of the table to toast it. They’ve eaten Christmas dinner here since Steve’s father died, since the Barnes family is a little better off than Steve’s is so their apartment has an actual dining room that can accommodate guests. The apartment Steve grew up in has a two-person formica table that’s attached to the wall in the kitchen. Bucky is on one side of Steve and Sarah on the other, and Steve is more content in this moment than he’s been in months. It feels like old times, like he managed to press rewind on his life to their high school years when he was invited over for Sunday dinner on a recurring weekly basis while his mom worked the late shift at the hospital. Bucky’s family has always been Steve’s, and vice versa. His little sister feels like Steve’s sister too, and his parents feel like an aunt and uncle. Right now, there are Christmas lights strung up around the windows, and a sparkling tree in the corner, and a massive turkey on a tray at one end of the table, and Steve is happy.  
   
“And to Bucky,” George adds, disrupting Steve’s daydream of Christmases past as he pulls them back into the present, where everything is different. “You’re making us so proud, kiddo.”  
   
“Dad.” Bucky blushes and grins down at his plate. “It’s Christmas, isn’t today supposed to be about Jesus?”  
   
Winnie smacks his upper arm lightly. “You will not take the Lord’s name in vain on his birthday.”  
   
“I didn’t!” Bucky protests with a laugh. “I was saying we shouldn’t make today about me, that’s the opposite of taking his name in vain.”  
   
“Christmas is about family,” George says, making the decision for everyone from his place at the head of the table. “And I am very proud of mine this year. Did Rebecca tell you she’s been chosen to represent her school at a state-wide science fair?”  
   
“Becs!” Bucky nearly shouts, rounding on her. “Why didn’t you?”  
   
“It’s nothing,” Becca groans, but she’s smiling too. She has the same dimpled, self-deprecating smile that Bucky does, when she’s embarrassed at being complimented but pleased with herself underneath it. She looks so much like him.  
   
“Doesn’t sound like nothing,” Steve tells her. “That’s amazing, Becca. Can we come?”  
   
“No!” Becca cries. “Absolutely not. No one else is bringing their families, none of you are allowed to show up. I mean it, I’ll never speak to you again.”  
   
Sarah and Winnie share a look that clearly communicates  _teenagers!_  without having to say it out loud.  
   
Steve chews on a mouthful of turkey and stuffing, watching Bucky and Becca argue about whether or not it’s acceptable for him to show up unannounced and embarrass her in front of the other students. Sarah’s hand pats his knee under the table, and Steve smiles at her. Most of Bucky’s interactions with his sister have been arguing, since the day she learned how to talk, and it’s oddly comforting. It’s home.  
   
Bucky is slumped sideways on his bed, later, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed and his long legs hanging off the edge of the mattress. Steve is sitting at his desk, flipping through an old binder with laminate pages full of carefully displayed Pokémon cards. He’s smiling to himself, remembering collecting these in elementary school, trading them on the playground and secretly under desks during math lessons. They were banned from their school, eventually, because kids were paying more attention to them than what they were supposed to be learning. It never stopped Bucky from smuggling them in and running a black-market style card trading racket in a rarely used janitor’s closet.  
   
“I can’t believe you still have these.”  
   
Bucky cracks an eye open, and then chuckles warmly. “I forgot I did. Mom was cleaning out my room a few weeks ago and found them in the back of the closet.”  
   
“Did she find the other box in the back of your closet?” Steve asks, halfway between teasing and genuinely embarrassed for Bucky if Winnie did.  
   
“The skin mags?” Bucky laughs again. “No, I took those with me.”  
   
“Do you not have internet porn in Pittsburgh like everyone else on the planet?”  
   
“‘Course I do. I just knew at some point she’d get in here now that I’m not around telling her to keep out. Didn’t want her finding old sticky magazines.”  
   
Steve wrinkles up his nose. “Gross.”  
   
“It’s Jesus’s birthday so fine, we’ll just pretend you’re too good and pure to jerk off.”  
   
Steve blushes and looks back down at the binder, his cheeks burning and his heartrate increasing. He doesn’t respond because he isn’t sure what to say. It doesn’t feel like something they should be talking about, even though it wouldn’t be the first time they have. It’s an uncomfortable, foreign feeling; being in Bucky’s bedroom with him and second guessing himself. Steve used to just blurt out anything and everything that came to his mind and never wondered for a moment whether Bucky would judge him or laugh at him or not understand. He’s told Bucky things he wouldn’t dream of telling anyone else, and it came so easy before.  
   
“I’m so tired.” Bucky yawns widely and stretches. His t-shirt rides up, and doesn’t settle back down when he relaxes again. Steve tries and fails not to stare at his stomach. It’s toned and tanned even though it’s December, and Steve makes himself look away. He stares down at a sparkly special edition Pikachu and pretends to be interested in that instead.  
   
“Tryptophan,” he says, an awkward amount of time later.  
   
“Somebody always has to say that, every time there’s turkey.” Bucky’s lips curve into a smile with his eyes still closed. His head is bent at an angle against the wall, the skin of his neck bunched up under his chin, and he looks so young. He  _is_ young, but sometimes Steve feels old. “I guess this time it’s you.”  
   
“Guess so,” Steve agrees, noncommittally. He closes the binder and sets it on the desk in front of him. When he looks back Bucky’s eyes are open, and he’s looking at Steve with a pensive expression on his face.  
   
“You okay?” Bucky asks, and it sounds like he really cares, like it really matters to him that Steve is honest with him, and Steve wants to tell him everything. He aches with it.  
   
“Yeah.” He nods, and tries to play it off. Bucky probably knows him too well for it to work, but he doesn’t press the issue. Steve gets up and walks over to the bed. “Shove over.”  
   
“It’s a twin bed,” Bucky complains, as he shifts over closer to the wall.  
   
Steve settles beside him; close but not touching. He isn’t sure he could handle touching. He’d pulled quickly out of the hug Bucky wrapped him up in, when Steve had gone with the Barnes’s to the airport to pick him up. Now that his friends all know the secret he’s been keeping, it feels so much more likely that everyone else will find out, if he loses control of himself and hugs too tight or looks too long. His guards are up, desperate to hold onto whatever dignity he has left in all this.  
   
Bucky doesn’t let him keep it. Because he doesn’t know, and because they’ve always been closer than brothers, he sinks down further into the pillows and rests his head on Steve’s shoulder. His hair smells like flowers. He must have borrowed Becca’s shampoo. It’s long enough to tuck behind his ears, now, and Steve has to curl his fingers to fists on his thighs to keep from reaching out and brushing back a single soft strand that falls across Bucky’s forehead. Not that long ago, he would have done it and it would have been meaningless. Now it feels like taking advantage, because Bucky doesn’t have all the facts. He thinks everything between them is the same as it’s always been, and it isn’t.  
   
“Hey, I um …” Steve lifts his hips up to dig into his back pocket. “I have literally about 12 cents to my name right now so I couldn’t get you a real Christmas present, but I did this.”  
   
He hands over the folded piece of paper. Bucky takes it and carefully unfolds it, and then stares at it with a small frown twisting his forehead.  
   
“Next year I’ll get you something real, I promise,” Steve says, shifting uncomfortably and staring at his hands.  
   
He’d paused the TV a few nights ago, during the Penguins' last game before the holiday break. Bucky had just scored what would end up the game winner. He was celebrating with his teammates in the corner, and the camera zoomed in close on his face, broken into the biggest smile. There are arms around him and his eyes sparkled so bright they practically lit up the screen. Steve had pulled out his sketch pad to recreate it, starting first with just Bucky’s face but then adding his teammates and the cheering crowd behind him once he’d decided to give it to Bucky instead of adding it to the shameful stack of his secret drawings. He hasn’t told Bucky about the art show, and he’s been praying it won’t come up because Bucky would demand to see the piece Steve had showcased and then his cover with be blown, like it was with Sam and Natasha.  
   
“Don’t be stupid,” Bucky says softly. He traces gentle fingertips over the drawing, and he’s still frowning but his lips are smiling. He looks overwhelmed, and Steve has to force himself not to read into it things that aren’t really there. “This is a real present.”  
   
“I guess.”  
   
“I don’t.” Bucky blinks up at him. “Thank you.”  
   
“Yeah. ‘Course.” Steve shrugs again.  
   
“I’m gonna frame it and put it up in my place in Pittsburgh. I mean it,” Bucky adds, when he can tell Steve is about the shrug that off too. “I love it, Steve. Thank you.”  
   
The sincerity shining in his eyes makes Steve want to lean forward and kiss him, or run away, or scream into a pillow. It all tangles up in his chest and leaves him feeling unsteady. Bucky goes back to looking at the sketch, tilting his head to rest back on Steve’s shoulder. Steve takes a chance – a stupid, dangerous, reckless chance – and tilts his own head, letting it lightly rest down on the top of Bucky’s. When Bucky doesn’t immediately shove him off and start shouting, Steve relaxes into him. With Bucky’s hair tickling his nose and Bucky’s heat pressed into his whole side, all the tension Steve hadn’t realized he was holding melts away.  
   
*           *           *  
   
Steve is late. He’d been holed up in one of the studios working on an assignment that’s giving him an annoying amount of trouble – oil paints have never been one of his strong suits – and he’d completely lost track of time and the sun was down before he realized it. Natasha is having something of a housewarming party, even though she’s been in her new apartment in Bushwick since before Christmas and it’s the middle of February. It’s probably more of an excuse to get drunk with all her new anarchist friends she’s met this year working for an environmental justice alliance organization that she’s told Steve about repeatedly and he always forgets the name of. Peggy is going to nag at him for not showing up when he said he would, and he hates that because she’s always right about whatever she’s chastising him for, so he hurries. The subway stops, like it always does, and Steve bounces in his seat and wills it to move for five full minutes before it lurches into motion again. The older woman next to him sarcastically mutters, “Hallelujah,” and a flamboyant man with neon pink lipstick and a rainbow shoulder-bag responds, “sing it, sister” from across the train.  
   
He’s well over an hour behind schedule by the time he skids into the foyer of Natasha’s apartment building and jabs at the intercom button. He’s expecting her voice to come over the loudspeaker but it doesn’t, just the buzzer that indicates the door has been unlocked. He pulls it open and jogs up the two flights of stairs, winded by the time he gets to the top. He hunches over to catch his breath for a moment before he knocks on the door. When no one comes to answer it, he tries the knob, finding it unlocked. He’s expecting to walk into the studio apartment to see Peggy’s annoyed face and Natasha’s hair a new color and a living room filled with people Steve doesn’t know and probably won’t make much effort to talk to this evening. What he finds instead is entirely different.  
   
There are people he doesn’t know, some standing around in small circles and some sitting on the floor, all of them with worried expressions on their faces. Steve frowns, and looks around at them. He locates Natasha, sitting on the floor in front of her couch. One of her friends is sitting beside her, an arm around her shoulder’s. Steve vaguely recognizes the girl; he’s pretty sure her name is Wanda. Natasha’s hair is blue, and her knees are tucked up to her chest, and she’s staring blankly at the floor in front of her as the girl next to her rubs her upper arm. Natasha looks up at Steve, belatedly noticing him standing here with no idea what’s going on. She doesn’t offer an explanation. Her face twists, like the sight of him breaks her heart, and she leans into the girl next to her and looks away from him. A quiet sob catches Steve’s attention, and his eyes move upwards from where Natasha’s sitting to the couch behind her. Sam is in the corner of it, and Peggy is completely in his lap, curled up in his arms and shaking, her face in his chest. His brain can’t make sense of that, because Steve has barely ever seen them hug. Peggy is Steve’s friend and Sam is Bucky’s; they run in the same circles by their association and have never been particularly close outside of their group. She’s crying, Steve realizes after a moment, and his stomach drops.  
   
“What happened?” he asks, his voice so quiet in his own ears that he’s unsure whether he even spoke the words out loud or just thought them.  
   
Sam notices him, looking at him from over the top of Peggy’s head. His eyes aren’t dry either. “You didn’t hear?” he asks, his voice sounding desperately sad.  
   
Suddenly Steve is panicked. “Hear what?”  
   
“It’s been on the news, we thought you would know. We thought that’s why you weren’t here. Peggy called you a hundred times.”  
   
At the mention of her name, Peggy sobs harder into Sam’s shoulder.  
   
Steve pats his chest and sides, feeling in his coat pockets for his cellphone, and realizing he doesn’t have it. He must have left it at school. He doesn’t know how he managed a fifteen minute subway ride without noticing he didn’t have his phone. “I was at school, I lost track of time, I … Sam what happened?”  
   
“Bucky’s been in an accident.” It doesn’t come from Sam, but from Natasha, still on the floor and still not making eye contact. “I’m sorry Steve, we thought you must be at home with your mom. We would’ve come to get you if we knew you were still at the university.”  
   
Steve doesn’t care about that, and can’t believe she’d think he would after the first thing she said. His ears hear the words but his mind can’t understand them at first. “What kind of accident?”  
   
“A car accident.” Finally Natasha looks back up at him.  
   
Behind him, someone walks over and closes the door. Steve hadn’t realized he’d left it open.  
   
Steve shakes his head and tries to process it. His brain feels like it’s stuffed with cotton. People get into car accidents all the time, it tries to reason. This wouldn’t even be the first time Bucky’s been in one. He was in a taxi with his dad once, when they were little, that was clipped by a limo that ran a red light. Bucky’d needed three stitches to his forehead. He still has the scar. But he was okay, people are in car accidents every day and they’re okay. But, if Bucky was okay, Peggy wouldn’t be crying in Sam’s arms.  
   
“What does that mean?” he asks. It comes out croaky, in a voice that doesn’t sound like his. “Is he okay?”  
   
“He’s alive,” Sam says, and it’s the worst possible answer he could have given. If it’s good news that he’s  _alive_  that means he might not have been.  
   
“We don’t know much else,” Natasha responds. She rubs the heel of her left palm under her eye. “But they’re saying it might be bad.”  
   
“Is he, what, he’ll be out for a few weeks?”  
   
“There was footage of the wreck on the news, Steve.” Natasha’s voice is gentle, placating, but firm and sad like she’s trying to force the reality of the situation into Steve’s head even though it’s resisting. “They got t-boned by a truck, the car was in pieces all over the highway.”  
   
Steve shakes his head, bile rising in his throat. “No.”  
   
“Why don’t we let you guys be together?” maybe-Wanda says. “We can reschedule this. You should be with your friends right now.”  
   
Natasha answers with a nod. Steve watches worried faces file past him, as people collect their things and put on their coats and scarves and gloves to venture back out into the brisk winter air. Steve understands the awkward air about them. They don’t know Bucky. They maybe know abstractly who he is, but they’ve never met him. They came for a party. Somebody Steve doesn’t recognize in the moment but probably has met before pats him sympathetically on the shoulder as they walk by Steve on their way to the door. He’s so numb he barely feels it. In the space of minutes the crowd is gone, and it’s just the four of them in Natasha’s small apartment. Steve still can’t make sense of anything. It’s like pieces from a hundred different puzzles are all trying to force themselves into one coherent picture in his brain but none of the grooves are right and the pieces won’t fit together no matter how hard he tries to make them.  
   
“Show me the wreck,” he says.  
   
Sam looks heartbroken as he shakes his head. “You don’t need to see that.”  
   
“Show it to me,” Steve demands.  
   
“Steve.”  
   
“Show it to me!” he shouts, enormously loud in the slight room. Natasha jumps and then covers her face with her hands.  
   
Steve isn’t expecting it to be Peggy who does it, but the other two don’t move. She climbs out of Sam’s lap and pulls her phone from her pocket as she walks over. Her pretty face is red and streaked with tears, black trails of mascara running down her cheeks and red lipstick smeared off her lips. She holds her phone out, and Steve takes it, and numbly swipes through a slideshow of aerial photographs of a dark rural intersection, police cars and fire trucks surrounding the area, and the completely shattered remnants of a red sports car. Bucky doesn’t have a red car, as far as Steve knows he’s still driving his old rusty Honda. He could afford a new car, now, but he hasn’t bought one yet. So it’s someone else’s car.  
   
“Where is this?” he asks in a harsh whisper.  
   
“I don’t know,” Peggy answers. “Outside Pittsburgh. The highway numbers are listed but I don’t know where they were going.”  
   
“Who was with him?”  
   
“I don’t know that either.” She sniffs and fresh tears spill over. “He’s the only one who’s been identified.”  
   
The word  _identified_ makes Steve’s blood run ice cold in his veins. It conjures up images of morgue drawers and body bags and police reports. He zooms in and searches, not really knowing what he’s looking for. A licence plate or blood on the pavement or evidence that there’s any way Bucky could have possibly survived a crash this catastrophic. Sam said he did, but Steve doesn’t see how he could have. Not when the carnage looks like it does.  
   
“Steve.” Peggy’s voice wavers, and Steve snaps his head back up to look at her. She looks desperately, irreparably sad. Steve is pulled away from himself. He can’t make sense of it any more than he could five minutes ago, but Peggy needs him, so at least that gives him a purpose. He hands her phone back to her and then pulls her into a hug. She crumbles, tears coming again and spilling onto his jacket. Her arms squeeze tight around his waist. Across the room, Sam has sunk down to the floor to sit next to Natasha. He’s holding her hand, and she’s leaned over with her head on his shoulder.  
   
Steve runs in his head through a list of the things he has in his possession that he could sell to scrape together enough money for a train ticket to Pittsburgh. The easel his mom bought him for his birthday a few years ago might go for enough to cover it if he books it through a discount website.  
   
“It’s okay, Pegs,” Steve says into her hair. He rubs her back as she trembles against him. “It’s gonna be okay.”  
   
*           *           *


	4. Chapter 4

Becca sniffles miserably on the couch next to him, and Steve shifts closer so he can put his arm around her. She leans without hesitation into him, tilting her head to rest on his shoulder so her quiet tears can fall onto his shirt. He rubs her upper arm and squeezes, but doesn’t say anything.  _It will be okay_ is a useless platitude. Steve doesn’t know whether it will be okay any more than she does, and he respects her too much to lie to her, even though she’s only 13 years old. She’s far too young, to lose her brother. Steve is too young to lose his best friend. George and Winnie are too young to lose a child. Bucky is too young to die. He had just achieved a dream he’d been dreaming for as far back as Steve can remember, and if this world takes him away from that only five months into his very first season, Steve will never forgive it. He doesn’t go to church as often as he used to, but he and Bucky both went every Sunday with their families when they were growing up. Steve was never sure he believed in God. It all seems a little ridiculous to him, and incredibly ridiculous to Bucky, who fought with his parents about it every single week. But if they hear from the hospital that Bucky is gone, Steve will be positive that God doesn’t exist. An almighty being who claims to love people wouldn’t do this to one of the sweetest souls He’s ever made.  
   
George is in the kitchen, on the phone with someone at the hospital in Pittsburgh. He’s arguing, and not getting the information he wants. Winnie is at the table in tears, with Sarah next to her, holding her hand. Steve’s iPhone is buzzing in his pocket, with texts likely from his friends asking for information, but he ignores them because he doesn’t have information to give them. George snaps at whoever he’s on the phone with and hangs it up angrily, and then gravely announces that Bucky was rushed to an emergency room and is in surgery, and that’s all a nurse was able to tell him at this time. Steve feels badly that she got hung up on. It isn’t her fault that she doesn’t have more of an update for them. But it’s been hours since the crash, and it makes Steve’s chest ache in the dread of what it might mean that Bucky’s still in surgery and the hospital still can’t even tell them for certain whether he’s going to  _live_ , let alone play again, or walk again, or all sorts of other nightmare situations Steve can drum up in his over-active imagination.  
   
“Book the next flight,” Winnie says, her voice wavering around tears that won’t slow. She wipes her face with her fingertips, and looks at her husband. “We had to be there when he wakes up.”  
   
George sighs, and nods. He touches his face too, covering it with his palms and then pushing his hands back through the thinning hair on his head. Bucky does that too. His mannerisms mirror his father’s so much, and Steve’s not entirely sure he’s ever noticed until now just how much. He leaves the room, heading to the den where their desktop computer is, presumably to look into flights and hotel rooms.  
   
“Becca can stay with me,” Sarah says to Winnie. “If she doesn’t want to come along.”  
   
Beside Steve, Becca lets out a shuddery sigh.  
   
“Becca?” Winnie asks, and she shakes her head against Steve’s shoulder.  
   
“I don’t wanna see him hurt,” she mumbles, low in volume but loud enough for her Mom to hear across the room.  
   
Winnie nods, and thanks Sarah for her offer. Then she looks back over, and asks, “Steve?”  
   
Steve blinks, and wasn’t expecting to be included. He’d been assuming he’d scrape some money together some time in the next few days and make his way to Pittsburgh on his own. “I couldn’t pay you back right away.”  
   
“You don’t need to pay us back, sweetie,” Winnie says, with a kind smile through her tears. “Bucky would want you to be there, too, when he comes back to us.”  
   
He nods, too numb to express how grateful he is for it, and hugs Becca a little tighter to get out of fumbling his way through an attempt at thanking her.  
   
*           *           *  
   
Steve has never been on an airplane before. Bucky’s family went on vacations over spring break a few times, but Steve’s parents never had the money for that kind of thing. Sometimes he would sit on the fire escape outside his apartment and stare up at the planes thousands of miles above, crossing the sky, leaving the white trail behind them, and wonder where they were going. He likes Brooklyn but he daydreamed about adventure, about getting onto an airplane and flying over the ocean, going to sand beaches and big cities to get lost in. He dreamed about making it to Paris and spending days in the Louvre, wandering among the famous works of art, sketching and absorbing the history and finding new kinds of inspiration.  
   
This is not the situation he’d wanted for his very first time on an airplane. It should have been hopeful and exciting, he should have been in his seat filled with anticipation instead of nerves and fear and cold dread. The surge of gravity that presses him back in his seat as the plane takes off should have been thrilling. Instead it makes him feel just as helpless as everything else. The roar is loud in his ears, and Bucky’s parents are pale and ashen-faced beside him, and Steve’s heartbeat thuds uncomfortably in his chest. For just a very brief moment as the plane rises, he almost enjoys the sight of New York spread out underneath him, massive skyscrapers getting smaller and smaller as they gain altitude. It’s beautiful, millions of tiny lights twinkling in the blackness. Bucky has seen this sight dozens of times this year, as his team jet-sets across the continent for games, back and forth like a ball in a pinball machine. Steve imagines him in first class, next to one of his teammates, laughing with his friends, on a high from a hard-fought win. Then he imagines the state Bucky’s team must be in right now, knowing what’s happened. He wonders if maybe some of them don’t know yet. It just happened, and it’s the middle of the night as they fly away from New York on the red-eye. He wonders if they’ll all wake up in the morning to find out their star rookie died on an operating table.  
   
Steve shakes himself a little, trying to dislodge the thought from his head. He needs to stop entertaining that as a possibility. Bucky is alive, and there’s no reason to think he won’t still be alive two hours from now when they arrive in Pittsburgh.  
   
They go straight to the hospital when they arrive. It’s almost three in the morning, and Steve is halfway between exhausted and wired, terrified of what they’re going to find when they get there. He barely notices a new city flying by the windows of the taxi. The hospital is as cold and white and sterile as every hospital he’s ever been in. When he was younger, he was in and out of them all the time. He distinctly remembers watching his Dad die, slow and tragic, even though he was very young when it happened. Hospitals are the stuff of his nightmares; he hates the linoleum floors and the walls scrubbed clean, the smell of disinfectant, the terrible food, the general feeling of death looming over them. He can only imagine it will get worse, now.  
   
They meet with a black-haired nurse who lets them know Bucky is out of surgery, and has been moved to a recovery room. It should be an enormous relief. Bucky is alive, he’s come through it, and Steve should be exhaling all his worries and his dread and revelling in the fact that Bucky his still with them, and whatever else may come they can handle. He can’t, because there is a frown on her face and darkness in her eyes. There’s something she isn’t telling them. George and Winnie don’t seem to notice, so Steve doesn’t speak it out loud just in case he’s wrong, even though he knows he isn’t.  
   
Waiting in a private room for the surgeon makes time tick by unbearably slowly. The clock on the wall is loud and irritating, counting the seconds that go by, the noise burrowing into Steve’s brain. George had lied, and said Steve was Bucky’s brother, so he could be there with them. Steve wonders if hospital staff ever double-check that sort of thing, and if they’ll be in trouble if it’s found out they weren’t telling the truth. When the surgeon finally enters, Steve was close to out of his mind from the stress of waiting. She’s pretty, dark hair pulled back off her kind face, but her smile is unmistakably sad, and Steve’s fears from the encounter with the nurse are confirmed. There was something she didn’t say to them.  
   
“I’m Dr. Cho,” she says, shaking their hands in turn and then sitting in a chair next to Winnie. “Thank you so much for waiting, I’m sure you’ve been anxious for news.”  
   
“Is he okay?” Winnie asks desperately. Tears haven’t stopped streaming slowly down her face since Steve and Sarah first showed up at the Barnes apartment, nearing on six hours ago.  
   
“He’s come through the surgery, as you know,” Dr. Cho says, with a small nod. “I’ll have someone take you to see him in a few minutes, although he won’t be conscious for several hours, and he’ll be groggy for a few days while we keep him on a heavy morphine drip. I won’t sugar-coat it, his injuries are severe. He will be okay, in time, but he has a long road of recovery ahead of him. He has several broken ribs, and we had to remove a considerable amount of glass and debris from the wounds to his chest and shoulder. There will be scarring.”  
   
“Scars don’t matter, as long as he’s alright.” Winnie sniffs, and George squeezes her hand.  
   
“What else?” Steve asks, finding his voice after not speaking for hours. It comes out scratchy. Dr. Cho looks at him, and Steve continues, “you’re not telling us everything, what else happened?”  
   
“I wasn’t keeping it from you, Mr. Barnes,” she says gently, addressing Steve with another sad smile. “I was getting to it.”  
   
“Getting to what?” George asks sharply.  
   
She swallows, and looks back to Bucky’s parents. “This is going to be difficult to hear. And I understand he’s a hockey player, which makes this harder. We had to amputate his left arm.”  
   
Steve hears the words, and understands what they mean individually, but can’t for the life of him make sense of what they mean collectively, organized in that order.  
   
Winnie gasps, and George goes so pale Steve’s worried he’s about to keel over onto the floor.  
   
“It was crushed against the door of the car,” the doctor is saying. Her voice sounds far away because Steve’s head has gone fuzzy. “There was nothing we could do to save it, I’m so sorry.”  
   
She continues but Steve stops listening. Her voice and Winnie’s sobs become distant white noise far in the background. He slumps down in his chair, resting his head against the back of it and staring up at the ceiling. He doesn’t blink until his eyes water and he has to. He feels like he’s back on the airplane; noise in his ears and an invisible force shoving him around, helpless to resist it because it’s stronger than he is. Bucky can’t play hockey without an arm. He’s two-thirds of the way into his very first season in the NHL, his lifelong dream, and just like that, in the course of one evening, it’s over, forever. He’ll never see the playoffs. He’ll never win a Stanley Cup. He’ll never win an award or score a hat-trick, he’ll never get traded, he’ll never participate in a players charity golf tournament during the off season, he’ll never break his own record for goals in a season because he’ll never  _have_ another season. Steve wants to yell, and cry, and burn the world down, and he just sits there, frozen and blank and empty.  
   
The others are moving. He automatically follows their lead, trailing after Bucky’s weeping parents as they’re led down a series of hallways to the intensive care unit, and shown to a room across from a nurses’ station. Dr. Cho tells them to stay as long as they like but to go home and get some rest before morning, and that in a day or two they’ll assemble a team of specialists to create a plan for his rehabilitation going forward. George thanks her, Winnie just cries, and Steve says nothing. His heart races in his chest as he stares at the open door, terrified of what he’ll find inside. Bucky’s parents enter the room but Steve hovers outside it for a moment longer, almost too scared to put one foot in front of the other.  
   
It’s so much like the room his Dad died in. White, like everything else in the building. There’s a window, but the shades are drawn. The bed looks like every other hospital bed Steve has ever seen, and there are beeping machines surrounding it and an IV stand with a bag attached. He takes in the room for a while before he can bring himself to look at the body in the bed. It’s Bucky, but at the same time it isn’t. It isn’t the Bucky that Steve knows, the one he’s loved every minute since he was a kid. It’s Bucky’s body – most of it – but it’s like his spirit is gone, like he’s dead, even though he isn’t. He looks small, and broken. Only his face is left uncovered by the white sheets, but it’s bruised and there are stitches along his hairline and under his eye. When Steve looks closer, he can see the way the sheets dip in the space where Bucky’s left arm should be, but isn’t.  
   
“I’m going to go see about a hotel,” George says, in a monotone voice, and he leaves the room without waiting for a response.  
   
Winnie sits tentatively on the edge of the bed near Bucky’s hip, her shaking hand hovering over the spot where his arm was, and then reaching up to gently brush a wayward strand of hair from Bucky’s forehead. “My sweet baby boy,” she whispers to him, touching his face.  
   
Steve can’t speak. He leans against the wall and stares at Bucky’s lifeless form, watching Winnie speak softly to him, even though he can’t hear her.  
   
*           *           *  
   
They book him a hotel room next to theirs, and Steve is grateful all over again but once again can’t find the words to say it. The queen bed is by far the biggest bed he’s ever slept in, but he barely sleeps. He tosses and turns until the sun comes up, and then he drags his drained body into the shower in the hopes that it’ll bring him back to life a little. It almost works. There are dozens of alerts on his phone when he bothers to check it. The only text he responds to is the one from his Mom, and he only replies to say they’re in Pittsburgh and they saw Bucky last night and he’s alive. She’ll be filled in, because at some point one of Bucky’s parents will have to make the call to Becca to tell her what happened. Steve finds it difficult to imagine a worse phone call. It occurs to him that he’ll be missing classes if he stays in Pittsburgh for a while, so he sends a quick email to his professors to let them know he’s had a family emergency. Then he sits on the edge of the bed and waits for the knock on his door letting him know George and Winnie are ready to head back to the hospital.  
   
There are people from the Penguins organization already there when they arrive, speaking to doctors outside Bucky’s room in hushed voices. Heartfelt expressions of sympathy are offered, and a man in a blue suit assures Bucky’s parents that they won’t be left to handle this on his own, that they’ll provide the support that Bucky needs in the next few months. Steve assumes they don’t have to do that, so it is a nice gesture. A new doctor who’s name Steve doesn’t bother to remember says Bucky has been in and out of consciousness; waking only briefly until the drugs kick back in and he drifts off again. She says it will be like that for days, as they’ll have to keep him heavily medicated at first to keep his body from going back into shock. It’s such a horrible prospect, waiting around a hospital for days on end for Bucky to wake up for real and realize one of his limbs is missing.  
   
In the daylight, Steve gets a closer look at Bucky, and it makes his stomach churn. He looks so small. People always look small in hospital beds, Steve knows that, but it hits him more starkly with Bucky because he’s always been larger than life. He’s always been loud and bright, his laugh infectious and his spirit gravitational. He’s always seemed so much bigger than he is, and he pulls people into that orbit and makes them feel like they belong there. He did that with Steve on the first day of Kindergarten, when Steve was nervous and didn’t want to go and was positive the other kids would be mean to him, and some of them were, but a kid with floppy brown hair and a gap in his smile had chased the bullies away and announced to Steve that they were going to be friends, as if it was just that easy, and then it was. Steve remembers that so clearly.  
   
And now he’s small and damaged, motionless except for shallow breathing that moves his chest almost imperceptibly up and down, in a hospital in a city that isn’t his home, unaware, as he sleeps, that his life as he knows it is over. In the afternoon Bucky’s parents leave for a few hours to meet with the team who will be taking care of Bucky, and Steve is left alone with him. He sits, like Winnie did the night before, on the bed next to Bucky’s hip. He wants so badly to touch. He wants to reach out and trail gentle fingertips over the stitches on his forehead, just to make sure Bucky’s skin is still warm. Mostly he wants to lift the sheet and see how bad it is underneath. The surgeon had said there’d be scarring, and Steve imagines a maze of incisions and stiches crossing over Bucky’s chest and stomach. He knows there’s nothing to see of his amputation yet because it’s heavily bandaged, but he wants to see that too. He doesn’t, because Bucky isn’t awake to consent to it. So he just sits, watching Bucky’s motionless face, and tries not to think about what’s coming.  
   
An hour in, Bucky stirs. Steve inhales sharply when he notices, watching with wide eyes as Bucky’s body slowly pulls itself to consciousness and his eyes peel open, bleary and unfocused. A low moan escapes his lips.  
   
“Bucky?” Steve whispers, leaning forward a little. “Buck, it’s Steve, can you hear me?”  
   
“Steve?” Bucky breathes, slurred but it’s very definitely his name.  
   
Steve tries to smile. “Yeah, I’m here. You’re safe, okay? You’re in a hospital, but you’re safe, they’re taking care of you.”  
   
Bucky’s forehead twists into a frown. “Hospital?”  
   
Swallowing thickly, Steve doesn’t know what to say next, but he doesn’t have to, because Bucky’s eyes close again and he moans louder, more urgently, and Steve realizes the reason he’d woken in the first place. It isn’t some romantic novel moment like he’d stupidly been imagining, where Bucky could feel his presence and fought against his consciousness to get to Steve. He woke up because the drugs wore off, and he’s in pain.  
   
Steve jumps up, shouting for a nurse. The noise startles Bucky, and he whimpers when it makes him move unexpectedly. Two nurses run in, one holding a syringe in her hand that she quickly attaches to the IV in Bucky’s hand and slowly empties into his veins. Bucky almost immediately goes motionless again. They hover over him for a few moments, checking things on the machines, and then they smile sympathetically at Steve as they leave the room. Steve steps backwards until he hits the wall, and he slips down it to the floor. He hasn’t cried yet, not even at Natasha’s apartment when he first heard what had happened, but now the tears spill over and he holds his knees close to his chest and tries to keep them silent. He presses his hand into his mouth as he shakes.  
   
The next day Bucky’s parents are asked to speak to the media, and Steve watches it from his hotel room after visiting hours are over. They’re standing in front of the hospital, both looking older than they are in their grief and their exhaustion, carefully giving a prepared statement to a sea of cameras and microphones.  
   
“Bucky … James, you know him as James, but we’ve always called him Bucky,” Winnie is saying tearfully. “He’s a fighter. He’s always been strong. We’re so heartbroken that …”  
   
She stops, unable to continue, and George put his arm around her and takes over. “We’re heartbroken that his career in the NHL is over so soon after it began, but we’re grateful to everyone who helped to get him there, even for a short time. Thank you to everyone who has been thinking about our Bucky and praying for him. To the fans who have reached out and sent cards or flowers. It warms our hearts to know he’s been in your thoughts. Please keep praying for him. The recovery process is going to be difficult but we know he can get there, and we’re so thankful to have your support and the support of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Thank you.”  
   
The reporters yell questions after them, but they retreat with security back to the hospital. The clip ends, and cuts back to the news anchors.  
   
“Such a tragic story,” the woman says, shaking her head sadly.  
   
“It really is,” her co-anchor agrees. He addresses the camera. “If you’d like to send gifts or well-wishes of any kind, we’ve put the address for the Penguins head office at the bottom of the screen, the hospital is asking fans not to send anything else to their location. We’ve also put up the website for the Penguins Foundation, the family is asking that in lieu of more flowers, donations be made in James Barnes’ name to the Penguins charity fund.”  
   
Steve shuts the TV off, and lies back on his bed, ankles hanging over the edge and arms flopped out to his sides. Beside his head, his phone lights up, and he squints at it. It’s Peggy, and he knows they’ve been given further details but he hasn’t answered any of the messages from his friends since he’s been here. He feels badly about it, and answers the phone.  
   
“Hi, Peggy.”  
   
“Steve.” She sounds upset, but like she’s struggling to keep her voice steady. “Hi, how are you? I mean I know you’re not … how are you holding up?”  
   
He sighs. “Alright, I guess.”  
   
“Is he awake yet?”  
   
“Not really.” Steve sniffs, and rubs his free hand over his face. “They’re trying to keep him under, for now. So he doesn’t freak out and hurt himself.”  
   
“I’m so sorry. This is so awful.”  
   
“Yeah.”  
   
“How’s his Mum? I just watched the news …”  
   
“I don’t know,” Steve admits. “I don’t think she’s stopped crying since it happened.”  
   
“What about you?” she asks gently.  
   
Steve closes his eyes, and repeats, “I don’t know that either. I don’t know how bad it’s gonna be, when he wakes up. He doesn’t know, Peggy. One of these days they’re going to lessen the dose of the drugs he’s on and he’s gonna come to and have to realize he doesn’t have a left arm anymore. I can’t … I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine waking up and finding out your life is over.”  
   
“His life isn’t over. I know … I know a big part of it is. I’m so sad about that, but he’s alive. He might not have been. That’s what we have to focus on.”  
   
“It’s Bucky, you know?” he says miserably.  
   
“I know.” Her voice is gentle and empathetic and it’s difficult for Steve to listen to. Too much sympathy always makes it worse, when he’s trying to keep himself from falling apart.  
   
Tears prickle at his eyes. “Even if I didn’t have a stupid crush on him, he’s still my best friend, since we were five years old. I don’t know how to handle this.”  
   
“I doubt he’ll know how to handle it either. I think you being there, just as lost as he is, might be more comforting than you think.”  
   
“I love him,” Steve admits, feeling so selfish about it, because it isn’t what he should be focusing on right now.  
   
“He’s going to need you, Steve.”  
   
Steve shudders, and squeezes his eyes shut against the tears. “What if I don’t know how to be what he needs?”  
   
“Of course you do,” she assures. “Best friends since you were five years old, remember? He won’t need you to  _be_ anything special, just be you. Just be there. That will be enough.”  
   
It wouldn’t solve anything for Steve to admit he doesn’t believe her, so he keeps it inside.  
   
*           *           *


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A million thanks to my lovely friend [Ignisentis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ignisentis/pseuds/Ignisentis) for help with both the city of Pittsburgh and the realities of limb amputation <3 you rock honey

It’s five days before the doctors decide to start slowly reducing the drug dosage and beginning to let Bucky slide out of the medically induced near-coma and back into reality. Steve is so scared for what will happen when he wakes up for real, when he’s with it enough to be told what’s happened and understand what it means. Bucky has always been so golden. He’s always been tanned skin and easy smiles and sparkly laughter, he’s been Steve’s north star, the brightest spot in his life that he always found himself pulled towards and never wanted to resist it. He’s talent and brilliance and confidence, and glowing potential, and adoration from everyone who knew him, and sweet moments of vulnerability that he saved just for Steve. Seeing him this broken is torture, and knowing it’s about to get worse is more than Steve can bear.  
   
They’d already received horrible news, the day before, about the driver of the car Bucky had been in at the time of the accident. It was one of the trainers from the team, a guy in his 30s with a wife and two little kids. He’d been in critical condition, far worse than Bucky is, and on the third time in four days that he’d crashed and they’d tried to restart his heart, they couldn’t get it beating again. Steve felt something inside himself die a little when one of the nurses had sadly informed them of his passing, because that so easily could have been Bucky, and there are two kids who now have to grow up without a Dad, and Steve knows all too well what that’s like. They still don’t know where Bucky was going with a trainer that led them to a rural highway outside of the city on a Friday night. Steve isn’t sure he wants to know, because whatever it was they were doing, if Bucky hadn’t gone along he wouldn’t be in a hospital bed right now missing a limb and waiting to find out his dreams have been dashed and his friend is dead.  
   
It's mid-morning on a Wednesday, when the lingering chemicals in his veins finally wear off. Steve is once again alone in Bucky’s hospital room. His parents are meeting with Bucky’s agent and with the team lawyers, going through the likely harrowing process of negotiating the termination of Bucky’s contract and a possible financial settlement. He wasn’t injured while performing any of his duties to the team, like playing or practicing or in a plane crash on his way to a game, so Steve assumes the team likely doesn’t owe him anything at all. Bucky’s agent might be able to get a portion of his contact paid out but Steve wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t.  
   
Steve is sitting in an uncomfortable armchair, facing the window with his feet propped up against the wall, trying to sketch. He hasn’t been struck with anything close to inspiration since he’s been here. He’d tried, the day before, to draw Bucky, but he only got as far as the rough outline of his body before Steve realized he was drawing Bucky as he is now – unconscious in a hospital bed – before he’d ripped the page from his sketch book and torn it into a dozen pieces before tossing it in the trash. He doesn’t want any record of Bucky like this. Months from now, when Bucky is healed, Steve will draw that. He’ll draw Bucky recovering and regaining his confidence and figuring out what he’s going to do with his life from here on out. He can’t draw Bucky broken, not when Bucky is supposed to be made of sunshine. At the moment he’s trying instead to sketch the view from the window. It’s mostly rooftops, and bare trees, and snow. The occasional car moving slowly down a side-street. He can see just the edge of the parking lot, even rows of dark-colored cars in spots outlined in yellow on the wet pavement. It’s mildly hazy and overcast, casting shadows over a view that wouldn’t be inspiring even on a clear day, and his drawing is relatively pitiful as a result.  
   
The sound of a sharp inhale to his left startles Steve, and he fumbles the pencil in his hand and it goes tumbling to the floor, bouncing off the linoleum. He can’t see Bucky’s face from his vantage point near the foot of his bed, but his chest is rising and falling more quickly than it has been as he sleeps. Steve slowly pushes himself up a little straighter in his chair, not wanting to react too suddenly, not wanting to jump up and make a scene if nothing’s happening.  
   
“Buck?” he asks, softly, just in case Bucky isn’t really awake.  
   
Another inhale.  
   
Steve stands, and Bucky’s eyes are open. He’s blinking up at the ceiling like his eyes won’t focus. Carefully, Steve moves closer to him, quiet steps and hands stretched out in front of him so he isn’t a threat. “Bucky, it’s Steve.”  
   
“Hi Steve.” His voice is steady, and strangely calm. Steve wonders if he remembers the other times he’s woken up, but he was so out of it that Steve doubts they would have stuck in his mind. If they briefly did, the morphine probably erased them not long after Bucky passed back out.  
   
“Do you …” Steve hadn’t planned what to say before he started speaking, hoping it would come to him mid-sentence, but nothing does.  
   
“This is a weird dream.”  
   
Steve closes his eyes against an unexpected wave of emotion, and has to take a moment before he can tell him, “it’s not a dream. You’re in a hospital.”  
   
“Oh. Okay.” Bucky nods. He’s still staring up at the ceiling, but then he lowers his gaze toward Steve. He looks a little more aware, but still confused. “Where?”  
   
“Pittsburgh.”  
   
Another slow blink. “Why are you in Pittsburgh?”  
   
“Because you’re in the hospital.” Steve knows the conversation is going in circles but he doesn’t know how much Bucky is capable of processing right at this moment so he doesn’t want to dump too much information on him. “Are you … does anything hurt? Do you need me to get a nurse?”  
   
Slowly, Bucky shakes his head. “Kinda … sore. Everywhere. Not so bad.”  
   
“Okay.” Steve nods, and moves a little closer. He tries so hard to smile down at Bucky, but he’s sure he looks manic and terrified instead.  
   
Bucky’s eyes are glassy, and his lips are slightly parted. He looks like he’s still half asleep, even though he seems to be comprehending the things Steve is telling him. He glances around, taking in his surroundings, and shifts a little. The motion makes him wince, and then he looks down toward his left side, craning his neck a little to see.  
   
Steve’s heart leaps into his throat as he watches Bucky realize. He clamps his jaw shut tight so the whimper that threatens to escape gets trapped in his mouth.  
   
Bucky just stares, for what feels like a long time, at the white sheet that’s covering him. He moves his shoulder a little, blinking quickly again, like his brain is struggling to process a complicated stream of information. “My arm’s gone.”  
   
Steve presses his lips together and his eyes fill with tears.  
   
Bucky looks back up at him, and repeats it.  
   
“Yeah.” Steve nods, sniffing and exhaling shakily. “Yeah, it is.”  
   
He expects Bucky to panic, but he doesn’t. He just stares at Steve, still with that lost look on his face. Then he tilts his chin back so he can look back up at the ceiling above them. Confusion shines in his eyes. His lips are parted, and his pupils dart back and forth, up and down, trying to work out in his mind things that don’t make any sense.  
   
“Where’s my arm, Steve?”  
   
Steve brings a shaking hand up to his mouth. His knees are wobbling so he sits, on the edge of the bed next to Bucky’s leg. “You were in surgery for a long time. They said they tried to save it but they couldn’t.”  
   
“Save it from what?”  
   
“You were in a car accident. Do you remember that?”  
   
Bucky’s lips close and his teeth clink together. He blinks a few more times and then shakes his head. A single tear slips from his left eye, sliding down the side of his face to the pillow under his head. It’s the only indication he’s emotionally processing the news. He still looks mostly confused, eyes sharply focused on the ceiling like he’s trying desperately to recall fuzzy memories and sort them back into the right order.  
   
“What year is it?” he asks, and for some reason that breaks Steve’s heart more than anything.  
   
“God, Bucky, it’s 2019. It’s February. You’ve only been out for a few days.”  
   
Bucky nods slowly, and repeats, “car accident.”  
   
“You don’t remember it at all?”  
   
“I remember … driving …”  
   
“Do you know where you were going?”  
   
He shakes his head again.  
   
“Okay. That’s okay, it doesn’t matter.”  
   
“Where’re my parents?”  
   
“They’re here. Well not  _here_ , but they’re in the city. They’re meeting with your agent.”  
   
Another painfully slow nod. Bucky licks his lips, eyes still trained upwards. “You’re sure this isn’t a dream?”  
   
“It’s not a dream.” Tentatively, Steve reaches out and rests his hand on Bucky’s knee. “I’m sorry. I wish it was.”  
   
Bucky swallows, and Steve watches his throat move. Then his arm lifts, shrugging the sheet off and reaching over to lift the opposite corner of it up so he can see his other side. Steve barely stifles a gasp as the sheet is pulled back. He hasn’t seen it either, yet. Every time he’s been in this room, Bucky’s been covered up to his neck, and Steve’s wanted so many times to peek but it felt so violating to do it without Bucky’s permission. His shoulder is wrapped in dressing and gauze – white, like everything else in this damn place – so it isn’t gruesome like Steve suspects it is underneath. But it’s like a punch to the gut, to be met with the sight of the complete absence of his arm. Steve wasn’t sure if there’d be any of it left, but there isn’t. It’s been cut right at the shoulder joint, and the bandages are held in place with long, radiating strips of tape to Bucky’s chest. Steve catches a glimpse of his bare stomach, as well; of the bandages there, too, and the lines of jagged stitches and the purple and yellow bruises. Bucky’s perfect golden skin is marred with violence and tragedy and it’s all Steve can do to keep from sobbing.  
   
Bucky notices the rest of himself, too; lifting his head up to get a better look and then wincing in pain and falling back down onto the mattress.  
   
“Easy,” Steve soothes, while Bucky breathes heavily through it and swears. “Just … relax, don’t make it worse.”  
   
“Worse,” Bucky repeats, with a quiet, humorless huff of breath, and Steve internally screams at himself. It’s maybe the least helpful thing he could have said.  
   
“I meant …” he trails off and doesn’t bother finishing the sentence, because it doesn’t matter what he meant.  
   
A third time, Bucky says, “my arm’s gone.” This time his eyes are closed, and tears are slipping silently from both, and it sounds like realization instead of confusion. Understanding, through the haze, what it all means. It’s indescribably more awful.  
   
“I’m so sorry,” Steve whispers, in the lack of anything to say that could make this better.  
   
“Can you go, for a minute?” Bucky asks, in an unsteady breath, and it’s the last thing in the world Steve wants to do. He wants to stay right where he is, take Bucky’s remaining hand and squeeze it, crawl into the bed with him and wrap around him and kiss his tears away and promise everything is going to be okay. The problem is, it isn’t a promise he can make, and after everything Bucky’s been through and everything he’s going to go through, he deserves the right to grieve privately if that’s what he wants. Steve can’t bring himself to take that away from him. Not when he’s already lost so much.  
   
He nods, and quietly makes to leave the room. In the end, he can’t abandon Bucky completely. He gets closer to the door, around the corner of the private bathroom, where Bucky can’t see him. He leans against the wall, and after a moment hears soft sobs from inside the room. Bucky crying, miserable and alone. Steve slips down the wall to the floor and cries with him.  
   
*           *           *  
   
Bucky exists the next few days as if he’s in a trance. He barely talks, eating when the nurses tell him to eat and answering their questions when they want to record his pain levels and letting them assist him to the bathroom without complaining about it. His legs, miraculously, were mostly unharmed in the crash, other than a few minor cuts and one nasty bruise to his right thigh, so at least he can walk, even though he limps a little and holds himself carefully to keep from ripping the stitches on his chest. It breaks Steve’s heart every time he watches a tiny nurse wrap her arm around Bucky’s waist and help his six feet and pounds of solid muscle slowly to the bathroom. He has to be frustrated, and embarrassed, and devastated, but he never says anything about it. Winnie tries to get him to talk, gently telling him he can cry or he can scream or he can curse the Lord, anything to let his emotions out into the sunlight so they don’t rot inside him. Bucky just shakes his head and says he’s fine with a thin, fake smile, and then closes his eyes and ends the conversation.  
   
The only indication Bucky even feels any of what’s happening to him is that all the light has gone completely out of his eyes. They’re almost not even blue anymore. They’ve turned grey in the harsh fluorescent lighting and the sparkle has dulled into nonexistence. There are lines around Bucky’s mouth and on his forehead, as if he’s aged ten years in a week. He doesn’t look like the person Steve knows, and Steve knows his Bucky is in there, somewhere, locked up tight inside his battered body. The person Steve knows is gentle and sensitive and sweet, the boy who cried when they found a wounded stray cat in an alley when they were 14 and insisted on taking her to a local vet and paying with his own allowance money for her to be fixed up. Steve knows that Bucky didn’t have enough and that George secretly paid the difference and never let on, wanting his son to think he’d saved the animal, and then Bucky spent a week nailing fliers to streetlamp poles until he found an older lady in their building who wanted to adopt the cat. She’d named her Jamie after her saviour and Bucky had visited them as often as he could. The Bucky that Steve knows is feeling every inch of this so brutally it must be shredding him to pieces inside, but he’s gone cold and blank and isn’t letting any of it show, and Steve finds himself guilty about yearning for the days when Bucky was unconscious. That was horrible, but this is far worse.  
   
Bucky starts physical therapy a week into his hospital stay, when his injuries have healed enough that he can get in and out of the bed on his own, even if it hurts to do so and his jaw tightens to keep a groan inside. He starts emotional therapy too, the hospital mandating he see a psychologist to help him deal with what’s been taken from him. Steve finds himself at loose ends during those hours, unsure of how to occupy his time in an unfamiliar city. Watching daytime cable in his hotel room is almost more insufferable than staring at a blank wall, and he doesn’t really have money to do anything in the city, nor is he willing to ask Bucky’s parents for more since they’re already paying for his hotel room that Steve knows can’t be cheap. He keeps wondering when that kind gesture is going to dry up. He has to assume that Bucky will be here for a while, at least a couple of weeks before he’ll be well enough to travel back to New York, and Steve can’t expect George and Winnie to put him up for that long.  
   
On a sunny Saturday Bucky’s agent drops by, looking serious and holding a file folder, and Steve gets out of their way. He doesn’t need to hang around in the background and eavesdrop on a conversation that isn’t any of his business. He takes a bus to a conservatory one of the desk nurses had told him about the day before. The glasshouse is massive, surrounded by sprawling grounds that Steve can imagine bursting with flowers in the summer. Clear walls and ceilings rise up stories against the blue sky, with sloped ceilings and onion blossom domes like an orthodox church. It looks out of time, like it was plucked from Victorian England and dropped into the suburban Midwest.  
   
It’s beautiful inside. Green palm fronds and the bright colors of tropical flowers, paths that wind through a jungle of vines and the smell of wet soil. It feels alive, like the whole building breathes along with Steve as he draws humid air into his lungs, the entire opposite to the cold and muted and lifeless backdrop of the hospital. Steve wanders, now and then reaching out to touch a enormous leaf or the warm, smooth bark of a tree. For an hour or two, he absorbs respite from the cold outside, feeling in his bones the healing of being in a place where things are growing, and thriving, and stretching upwards toward the weak winter sun that filters in through the panes of glass.  
   
He finds a corner where he can sit on the ground without being in the way of other visitors, and he draws. He sketches a hibiscus bush, with healthy green leaves and large, showy pink flowers. He sketches Bucky’s face in the middle of it, surrounded by nature and sunshine, with his lips curved into a smile. As a second thought, he adds the line of delicate stitches above Bucky’s left eyebrow. Bucky happy and healing doesn’t have to be at odds with the trauma he’s suffered. After he finishes it, a young mother and two small children settle on a bench a few yards away from him, and she pulls picture books from her bag and starts reading to them as they snuggle into her from either side. Steve flips to a blank page and draws them, too.  
   
Bucky is alone in his room, when Steve gets back to the hospital. He doesn’t know where George and Winnie have gone, and he doesn’t ask. Bucky is propped up a bit on some pillows, still lying down but not flat on his back. He’s sort of staring into space as Steve enters the room with a tentative knock at the open door, as he’s been prone to do since he woke up. He looks over at the knock, and nods to indicate Steve can come in. Steve closes the door behind him; doesn’t push it closed all the way so it latches, because the hospital doesn’t like that, but shuts it most of the way so they can have a bit of privacy. He wants to show Bucky what he drew at the greenhouse, but isn’t sure whether he should. It might make Bucky sadder.  
   
“How did it go?” Steve asks, pulling a chair up next to Bucky’s bed, on his right side.  
   
“Okay.” Bucky’s eyes narrow for a moment, like he’s thinking it all over, and then he exhales. “There’s a settlement. I don’t … he explained the logistics of but, I didn’t totally understand, but … it’s something. I guess because the guy driving the car was an employee, it means they owe me damages or whatever. I don’t wanna sound ungrateful. It’s not a small amount of money, it’s enough to keep me going for a while until I figure out what I’m gonna do now.”  
   
Steve nods. “That’s … that’s good.”  
   
“Yeah.” Bucky slides his lips together, worrying the bottom one between his teeth. Steve’s eyes track it as it slips back out. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”  
   
Steve looks at him, finds Bucky’s frowning but making laser-focused eye contact. He’s looking for confirmation on Steve’s face, because he knows Steve has always been shit at lying to him.  
   
“Jeff. The trainer,” he clarifies, unnecessarily. Steve knew who he meant.  
   
“Buck …”  
   
“I keep asking, and people keep smiling all sad and telling me I don’t need to be worrying about that right now.” Bucky’s expression shifts, goes from accusatory to pleading. “I just want somebody to tell me the truth.”  
   
Steve swallows, and it burns in his throat like a chunk of a potato chip going down the wrong way. “Yeah. He is.”  
   
Bucky nods quickly, and looks away. Tears fill his eyes for the first time since the day he woke up. “He has kids.”  
   
“I know.”  
   
“Should’a been me,” Bucky mumbles, and Steve can’t say he wasn’t expecting that, but it hurts all the same.  
   
“Please don’t say that.”  
   
“He has little kids, Steve.”  
   
“That doesn’t make it your fault that he’s gone,” Steve insists. “You weren’t driving either of the cars, if there’s anyone in this mess who’s the  _least_ at fault, it’s you.”  
   
“I still don’t remember where we were going,” Bucky admits, in a miniscule voice. “What if it  _is_ my fault, what if I’m the reason we were on that highway. What if he was driving me somewhere?”  
   
“Even if that’s true, it’s not your fault he’s gone.”  
   
“He has a  _family_ , Steve!” Bucky cries, raising his voice for the first time since he’s been here. Steve hasn’t heard him anything close to agitated yet, when anger would be a perfectly normal response to what he’s been put through. Now his eyes are wild, and it’s terrifying. “He has a family that needs him, and he’s dead and it might be because of me!”  
   
“And what about your family?” Steve returns. “Your parents, and Becca,  _they_ need you!”  
   
Bucky inhales sharply like he’s about to respond in kind but then he coughs and he winces in pain, and Steve drags his chair closer and puts a hand on Bucky’s arm, rubbing intently. “I’m sorry, fuck, I’m sorry, just breathe.”  
   
Slowly, Bucky’s chest rises and falls and he gets it back under control. Tears slide down across his long eyelashes and he wipes them away with his hand, knocking Steve’s hand off his arm in the process. He sighs, and looks away from Steve toward the opposite wall. “And what about you?”  
   
“What about me?”  
   
“Why are you still here?”  
   
It likely wasn’t meant to sound the way Steve’s ears hear it, but it cuts deep into his heart anyway. “Do you want me to leave?”  
   
Another sigh, and Bucky turns his face back to look at him. “That’s not what I meant. I know you’re missing school to be here. You can’t have thought I wouldn’t work that out.”  
   
“It’s just a few classes. I can make them up.” It’s not entirely a lie, but there are shades of half-truths in it, and Bucky knows him too well. Steve’s email inbox is full of unread messages from professors, asking when he’s planning on returning. He’d vaguely offered the Dean an excuse about a family emergency when he first arrived in Pittsburgh, but they’ll need more information than that to officially allow him accommodations, and Steve’s been avoiding it because he doubts a friend in the hospital will be enough for him to qualify for special treatment.  
   
“You’ve been here over a week. That’s more than a few classes.”  
   
“It doesn’t matter.”  
   
“Of course it fucking matters.” Bucky glares at him, and then looks away, and his voice wavers in sadness as he says, “you’ve wanted to go to art school your whole life, and now you’re in, and you’re gonna throw it away to sit here watching me be pathetic in a hospital bed? Just because my dream is dead doesn’t mean yours should be, too.”  
   
“You’re not pathetic.” Steve tries to blink away his own tears, and doesn’t quite manage it. He puts his hand back on Bucky’s bicep and squeezes. “And I’m not throwing anything away, and you … we’re just gonna have to find you a new dream.”  
   
“Hockey’s the only thing I’ve ever been any good at.”  
   
“That is not true even a little bit,” Steve says, but then softens his tone, and adds, “but if that’s how you feel at this moment, then … you should just feel it.”  
   
“I don’t need you to be my shrink,” Bucky mumbles, but there’s no venom in it. “Already got one of those.”  
   
“You could just let me be your friend, then. Without trying to get rid of me.” Steve shakes Bucky's arm, just slightly, just a tiny, minute gesture that won’t jostle his other injuries but calls back to the way they used to be together, when Bucky would pull him into a sideways hug and ruffle his hair, or Steve would tackle him down onto the couch and attempt to wrestle the TV remote away from him.  
   
Bucky sighs again, but relents. “Yeah. Okay.”  
   
Aching to crawl into the bed with him, instead Steve leans forward and rests his forehead against Bucky’s uninjured shoulder, and smiles to himself a little when Bucky’s hand comes up to tangle long fingers in his hair.  
   
*           *           *


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been over a month since I updated this one, THANK YOu for patience and for kind curious anons on tumblr.

It’s three weeks before Bucky is well enough to travel back to Brooklyn.  
   
Steve doesn’t stay in Pittsburgh that long. Bucky’s Mom does, but his Dad has to go back to work and Steve can’t ask them to keep paying for a hotel room for him and meals for him when there’s no way he could ever pay them back. He does stay a while after Bucky wakes up. Watches him fade back to blank and emotionless, after a few early weak moments. Bucky doesn’t cry again, at least not while Steve is with him. For all Steve knows he spends his nights sobbing alone into his pillow, but there’s no trace of it left in the morning when Steve arrives. Mostly Bucky is quiet. He listens when the doctors come in with new information, absorbing it and nodding. He does what they tell him. He goes daily to physical therapy, learning how to do things one-handed like dressing himself and showering and cutting up food. He always comes back tired and frustrated, but never says it out loud. Steve can just tell, because he knows Bucky so well.  
   
“I can stay,” Steve tells him, the day he’s supposed to fly home with George. He probably can’t, in reality. He wouldn’t be able to afford to, on his own. He still feels like he should say it. It would break his heart into a million pieces of Bucky thought he was being abandoned.  
   
“No you can’t,” Bucky counters. He’s sitting up, cross-legged on his bed. Now that his other wounds are healing, they’re allowing him to wear a t-shirt and sweatpants instead of a hospital gown. Steve is sure it makes him feel a little more human, less like a patient and more like a person in recovery. It’s still unnerving for Steve, to see the left sleeve of the shirt hanging limp with nothing in it. Bucky’s face is covered in stubble and he’s lost some muscle-mass already and he just really doesn’t look like the boy Steve knows, and it’s a struggle to keep from crying about it. Everything is so enormously unfair.  
   
“I could figure it out.”  
   
“How?” Bucky asks, with a raised eyebrow that he sends at Steve for just a moment before looking back down at the spread of cards in his hand. “Threes?”  
   
Steve is on his bed, too, sitting across from him. They’re playing  _go fish_ , because they used to all the time when they were kids and Steve couldn’t think of the rules to any other card games. He does have a three in his hand, and he turns it over. Bucky struggles momentarily to hold onto his cards between his thumb and forefinger and accept the one Steve holds out between his pinkie and ring finger, but he manages it.  
   
“I don’t know,” Steve admits. “Got any tens?”  
   
“Go fish.” Bucky licks his lips, and eyes Steve again just for a moment before looking away. “I’m alright, y’know.”  
   
Steve considers the statement. “Are you?”  
   
Bucky shrugs. “As alright as I’m gonna be, I guess. What I mean is, you staying here and fucking up your school stuff isn’t helping me be any better. Queens?”  
   
Steve shakes his head to indicate he doesn’t have a queen in his hand, and then says, “you can just tell me to fuck off if you’re sick of me.”  
   
“That’s not …” Bucky sighs, and shakes his head, and finally looks Steve right in the eyes and holds his gaze. There’s so much sadness in his blue eyes, always, since the moment he woke up. Steve hasn’t mentioned it, doesn’t want to make it worse, but it’s been tearing him apart to see Bucky so miserable.  
   
“I know.”  
   
“I’m not sick of you. I’d never be sick of you.”  
   
Steve nods, and feels a little better. He shouldn’t. Everything is still a mess, it shouldn’t be a silver lining for him that Bucky wants him around.  
   
“I’m glad you came,” Bucky tells him. “Really. But how am I supposed to feel knowing if you skip many more classes they might kick you out or something? Just so you can be here playing cards with me?”  
   
“Maybe I don’t care if they kick me out,” Steve replies, seeing the responding eye-roll out of the corner of his eye. “Sevens?”  
   
Bucky sighs. “Yeah.” He tries to pull a card from his hand but fumbles, and drops them all onto the bed in front of him.  
   
Steve covers his eyes, to let Bucky pick them back up without peeking at his cards, but after a moment he lifts his hand and finds Bucky reclined back against the pillow with his own hand over his face, his cards abandoned on the bed between them.  
   
“It’s just a stupid game,” Steve says. He tosses his cards onto the pile and scoops them all up, reassembling the deck and putting it back into his pocket.  
   
“I don’t care about the game.”  
   
“I know,” Steve says again.  
   
Bucky shifts over to one side, and nods at the space he leaves beside him.  
   
Steve swallows. It’s hard to be close to him, when all he wants to do is grab Bucky’s face and kiss all that sadness away and he can’t. But he can also never say no. He crawls forward, lying down beside him. Bucky shifts over enough to rest his head on Steve’s shoulder. He smells like hospital soap. Steve wants him back in Brooklyn using his own stuff in the shower so he’ll smell like himself again.  
   
“I don’t want you throwing your life away for me.”  
   
“That’s not what I’m doing.”  
   
“You wanted for years to get into that school. Steve, come on. I get it, okay, if our positions were reversed, I’d wanna stay here too. But if our positions were reversed, there’s no way you wouldn’t be tellin’ me to leave. You know that.”  
   
He isn’t wrong about that, so Steve can’t argue.  
   
“I’ll be back in New York soon. A little bit more rehab and they’ll let me come home. I’ll call you every day with a status update, okay? I swear. You gotta go back. Don’t make me deal with knowing your life is fucked up too, because of all this.”  
   
“Your life isn’t fucked up. We’re gonna figure that out, too. Find you something you love even more than hockey, and then I’ll draw you doing that, so you can replace the one I gave you for Christmas.”  
   
“I don’t want something new.”  
   
Steve knows that, but doesn’t know what else to say.  
   
He leaves in the evening, after making Bucky promise again that he’ll call every day to let Steve know how he’s doing. The flight home is only hours, but it feels like days. Steve stares out into the endless expanse of black sky around the airplane, and feels more hopeless than ever.  
   
*           *           *  
   
Peggy and Sam and Natasha pepper him with questions, at Natasha’s apartment a few days after Steve gets home. He tries to answer them as best he can, and tries to overcome his own desire not to talk about it because they’re Bucky’s friends as well, and they deserve answers.  
   
“What does this mean, with the team and everything?” Sam asks.  
   
“Obviously he’s not on the team anymore,” Natasha answers for Steve, smacking Sam on the chest. “You can’t play with one arm, dumbass.”  
   
Steve isn’t sure Sam deserved that. “I don’t know, what it means. It means he’ll come back here once he’s well enough to fly, and … he’ll figure it out from there.”  
   
“What does it mean for you?” Peggy asks softly.  
   
Steve is about to ask what she means, but then understands from the look on her face. He’s never discussed his feelings with Sam and Natasha, but he knows they know. It’s sat between them, like a lump in their collective throat, since Christmas.  
   
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I doubt it’ll change anything. He … he was never gonna want me back anyway. Not in same way.”  
   
“You don’t know that,” Sam says kindly. “The way you two are around each other, it’s …”  
   
“Like you’re speaking your own language,” Natasha finishes, when Sam trails off. “It’s always been like that.”  
   
“He’s straight,” Steve points out.  
   
“You don’t know that either.” Sam shrugs. “Don’t write it off as a possibility, is all I’m saying. You don’t know for sure how he feels.”  
   
“He’s not gonna be thinking about shit like that right now. That much, I’m pretty sure I know,” Steve says.  
   
Sam just shrugs again, but does at least relent that Steve is probably right about that.  
   
Steve can feel Peggy’s eyes boring into his brain from where she’s huddled up close to him on the couch. He doesn’t look at her. Her face would be filled with sadness and sympathy and he can’t deal with that just now.  
   
*           *           *  
   
Nine days later, Bucky’s home. Steve had wished so many times for him to come back to Brooklyn, but he didn’t want it like this. Bucky left an arm and his dreams on a highway outside Pittsburgh, and the day after he gets back, Steve drops out of school. He’s missed important lessons, and several assignments, and since Bucky isn’t technically his family Steve can’t apply for special treatment. His advisor sits him down in her office, hands folded on the desk and a disappointed expression on her face as she tells him she really doesn’t know ho he’s going to make up the time he lost and he’ll probably have to retake the classes he’s in next semester. Steve shrugs, and tells her he’ll just leave instead. It’s the easiest decision he’s ever made. Bucky needs him, and there’s no money in being a struggling artist anyway.  
   
He doesn’t tell anyone but his Mom. He can’t let Bucky blame himself for it.  
   
*           *           *  
   
Bucky refuses to see anyone but his family and Steve. Their friends want to come over, want to hug him and tell him they’re sorry about everything, but he doesn’t return their texts. His teammates are on the island, to play the Rangers and MSG, the day after Bucky gets home, and some of them want to see him as well. He turns that down too. Steve doesn’t comment on it. He just watches, as Bucky struggles with simple tasks, and takes a cocktail of pills every day to avoid infections and keep the pain manageable, and carries Bucky’s sadness with him silently. There’s nothing any of them can say to make this better. Becca tries a few times, until Bucky gets frustrated and snaps at her, and she runs to her room crying and doesn’t try again.  
   
Steve thinks Peggy has figured out that he dropped out of school. She hasn’t said anything outright but a comment or two has alluded to it, and Steve has brushed it off because he isn’t ready to deal with it. Bucky is his focus. The only thing that matters anymore is getting Bucky through this.  
   
“I hate it here,” Bucky mutters. He stirs sugar into his coffee, sips it, grimaces, and then adds more. “And I’m so sick of hearing myself complain about it.”  
   
“Your Mom’s still …?”  
   
“She’s trying to help.” Bucky looks down into his mug. Strands of hair fall into his eyes. Steve’s fingers itch with the urge to brush him back. Then he hates himself. “But she hovers. She doesn’t let me do anything on my own. The other day she asked me if I needed help  _showering_.”  
   
“Do you?” Steve asks, hoping to make Bucky laugh. He’s rewarded with a small smile.  
   
“I’m getting better at it.” Bucky shrugs. “They said it’ll take a while.”  
   
“You’re making progress. That’s amazing, Buck.”  
   
Bucky shrugs again.  
   
“No, I mean it.” Steve reaches across the table and nudges Bucky’s knuckles with his own so Bucky will look at him. “I should’a known this wouldn’t keep you down for long. You’ve always been stubborn.”  
   
“That’s really rich, coming from you,” Bucky teases. He appreciates the compliment, though. Steve can see it in his eyes.  
   
“So you learned from the best.”  
   
“I did.” Bucky’s smile widens, but then slips away as he looks around the kitchen.  
   
“Let’s get our own place,” Steve suggests. He hears himself say it as if he’s across the room, watching their conversation from some invisible spot in the corner. He doesn’t mean to say it, it isn’t even a thought he’s had before this moment, but suddenly it feels right. It also feels unbelievably reckless. If Bucky agrees, Steve is in so much trouble. It’s hard enough being around him as much as he is now.  
   
Bucky blinks a few times, and for a second Steve thinks he’s going to turn him down. But then he smiles shyly. “Yeah?”  
   
Steve’s heart races. “I mean. If you want?”  
   
“You wanna live with me?”  
   
“Sure.”  
   
“You know I’ve got … a million medications and physical therapy twice a week and sometimes I wake up at night and my arm hurts even though it’s gone.”  
   
Steve frowns. He hates the look on Bucky’s face, hates that he thinks any of those things might constitute a reason Steve wouldn’t want to live with him. “That sucks. It really fucking sucks, but it’s not a deal-breaker. You’re my best friend, idiot. It doesn’t matter how many arms you have.”  
   
Bucky laughs softly, but then his face falls. “The Penguins won last night.”  
   
“You’re watching the games?”  
   
“They’re my team. I probably shouldn’t. Probably makes it worse.”  
   
“I’m sorry,” Steve says. One moment of the promise of happiness, and now he’s right back to feeling helpless.  
   
Bucky sighs, and it’s uneven, and he’s holding back tears. Steve wishes he would stop holding them back. He gets up, going around the table without even thinking about it and pulling Bucky into a hug. They’ve hugged a million times, and now Bucky can only hug back with one arm. It’s different, but at the same time, it isn’t. He’s still Bucky. He’s still the person Steve’s been in love with for his entire life.  
   
“Everything’s shit, alright?” Steve tells him. “It’s shitty that you got hurt, it’s shitty that you can’t play anymore, it’s shitty that you got everything you wanted for such a short time before the stupid universe took it from you.”  
   
“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. He sniffs, and his face pushes into Steve’s neck. It’s wet against his skin, and Steve hugs him tighter.  
   
“Let’s get an apartment. I might have to owe you for a while, for my half, but – ”  
   
“How about you pay me back by putting up with my depressed ass, and we call it even?”  
   
Steve doesn’t like that idea at all, but given that he’s currently unemployed and living back with his own mother, he’s in no position to refuse the offer. “Deal.”  
   
*           *           *  
   
They can see the river from the windows in the living room, in the apartment Bucky buys. It’s a nice place, up high in a newer building, close to bars and restaurants and a club that plays swing music. It’s much nicer than Steve thinks he deserves, but Bucky’s the one paying for it, at least until Steve can find work and start contributing. Steve’s bedroom is bigger than his entire dorm room at Tisch. The kitchen has an island, and shiny white countertops. The shower in the bathroom is big enough to fit about six people at a time. It’s expansive, and high-ceilinged, and really, really nice. And like he knew he would be, Steve is miserable.  
   
Not all of the time. Bucky gets better, slowly and not linearly but day by day he improves. He learns how to do most things one-handed, and swallows his pride enough to start asking for help with the things he can’t manage. He lets their friends come over, lets them all give him big, tight hugs and makes them promise not to feel sorry for him, and they sit around the kitchen table and talk and laugh and it feels like it used to, in high school before Bucky left them. In those moments, Steve is happy.  
   
It’s in moments when they’re alone that he aches inside. Moments when Bucky gets frustrated over a task that would be simple with two hands but is impossible with one, and Steve longs to fix it for him but can’t. Moments when Bucky stumbles into the bathroom late at night, fumbling around in the dark for his painkillers, because the ghost of pain in his lost arm woke him up. Moments when he cries, alone in his room, thinking Steve can’t hear him, and Steve burns with the need to kick in the door and scoop him up and cry with him but he doesn’t because that would only make it worse. Moments when Bucky is soft and rumpled first thing in the morning, and he’s so beautiful with messy hair and pillow lines on his face and Steve wants to kiss him with every single cell in his body, but can’t.  
   
*           *           *  
   
“You dropped out, didn’t you?”  
   
Steve looks up from the enormous stack of books he’s restocking. He took a job at a bookstore close to their apartment last week. It’s a bit boring, but at least he has somewhere to actually go now, while he’s pretending to be in class so Bucky won’t find out he quit. Natasha’s face greets him. Her hair is neon purple, and her lipstick matches it. There’s a new tattoo on her left collarbone – or maybe it’s been there for a while now and Steve’s been too self-absorbed to notice.  
   
“I – what?” he stammers.  
   
“That’s what I thought.” She fixes him with a hard stare, but then it softens just a little. “Did they make you?”  
   
Steve doesn’t know how, but he’s been caught and it’s pointless to pretend otherwise. He puts the pricing gun down on the counter. “No. I missed too much in some of my classes, when I was in Pittsburgh. Would’ve had to take them again in the Fall. So I said fuck it.”  
   
She shakes her head, face folding halfway between annoyance and empathy. “Does he know?”  
   
“Who?”  
   
“Rogers.”  
   
Steve sighs. “No, Bucky doesn’t know.”  
   
“So he thinks you’re in class right now?”  
   
“I assume so.”  
   
“You assume so,” she parrots, with and eye-roll and a dramatic sigh.  
   
“I don’t need you giving me shit about it, alright?” Steve picks up the stack of books and walks away from her. He heads to the self-help section to shelve them, and pointedly ignores the irony.  
   
“How do you think he’s gonna feel when he finds out you’re lying to him?” Natasha asks, following him.  
   
“I’ll deal with that when I have to.”  
   
“Steve.”  
   
“What?” he snaps, too loudly, earning them looks from the other customers.  
   
Whatever lecture she was about to give him fades away, and she leans back against a shelf and crosses her arms over her chest, sadness passing over her face.  
   
“New tattoo?” Steve asks, as an olive branch.  
   
She pulls the collar of her shirt back to show him. “Lyrics from  _The Black Parade_.”  
   
“Suits you.”  
   
“Thanks.”  
   
“Is your Mom pissed?”  
   
“Not any more than she was about the others.”  
   
“What does Sam think?”  
   
Natasha glares at him, and Steve tries not to smile too obnoxiously.  
   
“I’m not the only one keeping secrets.”  
   
“We aren’t dating.”  
   
“If you say so.”  
   
“Seeing each other naked on a semi-regular basis is not the same as dating.”  
   
Steve shrugs, and repeats, “if you say so.”  
   
“Well you’re one to talk,” she accuses. “You’re living with a guy you’ve been in love with since we were in kindergarten, and you refuse to tell him that.  _And_ you’re lying to him about school.”  
   
“What good would telling him do?” Steve reasons. “He’d just blame himself. Even if I told him 50 times a day for the next year it isn’t his fault, he’d still blame himself.”  
   
“Yeah,” she agrees. “He will. But he’s going to find out at some point anyway. In three years when you don’t graduate with a degree, he’s gonna notice. Won’t it be worse if he also has to find out how long you’ve been lying to him about where you’re going every day?”  
   
Steve knows she’s right, but doesn’t know how he would even bring it up.  
   
“And the other thing?”  
   
Steve looks at her. He forgets, sometimes, that she’s known him almost as long as Bucky has. That she knows him almost as well. “I can’t tell him I love him, Nat,” he says quietly. He slides the last book into place on the shelf, and then leans against it beside her. She bumps his elbow with hers.  
   
“Why not?”  
   
“Because he’s lost everything. If I tell him that and he doesn’t feel the same way, and he  _doesn’t_ , then maybe he won’t wanna be friends with me anymore and he’ll lose that too. We’ve been friends our entire lives, I can’t take that away from him. I can’t be that selfish.”  
   
“I don’t think loving someone is ever selfish,” she responds, her voice gentle.  
   
“You knew, didn’t you? Before the art show?”  
   
“I suspected. The way you look at him … it’s kinda hard to miss.”  
   
“Peggy figured it out, too. Guess I’m not so good at hiding it.”  
   
“You know he looks back, right?”  
   
Steve shakes his head. “No he doesn’t. Not in the same way.”  
   
With a soft sigh, she lets it go. “I guess you’d know, better than me.”  
   
Steve has to clench his teeth to keep from breaking down right there in the store.  
   
*           *           *  
   
Bucky falls in the shower, the next evening. Steve hears him crashing down, and he rushes in to help, covering Bucky with a towel and pointedly not looking at him until he does and then helping him get to his feet and making sure he isn’t hurt. He isn’t, just embarrassed, and frustrated. His wet skin glistens, and his hair drips into his eyes, and Steve tries to force his eyes away but can’t. For the very first time, he sees Bucky’s shoulder up close. There aren’t bandages anymore, so Steve can see where the skin has been sewn together over bumps of bone. He tries not to stare at that, too, but fails and Bucky catches him.  
   
“I know,” he mumbles, grabbing a second towel off the rack to wrap over his shoulders, hiding himself. “I know it’s gross.”  
   
“No, it …” Steve shakes his head, desperate to explain but lacking the vocabulary. “It isn’t, I’d just never seen it. Sorry. There’s nothing wrong with it.”  
   
“I’m missing a  _limb_ , Steve,” Bucky grumbles. “There’s a lot fuckin’ wrong with it.”  
   
“That’s not what I meant.”  
   
Bucky doesn’t answer him. He goes over to the sink and starts drying his hair. Steve understands that the conversation is over, and he leaves the room. Back in his bedroom, he sits on the floor with a pillow pressed over his face to muffle the sound of tears.  
   
*           *           *  
   
A week after his conversation with Natasha, and three days after a similar conversation with Peggy, Steve decides they’re right, and he can’t keep lying about dropping out. He goes home at the end of an eight-hour shift determined to come clean about that, at least, if not about everything else. He isn’t ready to take that plunge just yet. He might never be.  
   
The apartment is quiet and dark, when he lets himself into it. He calls out Bucky’s name, but gets no answer. There’s a light on at the end of the hallway, coming from Steve’s room, and he frowns and goes toward it. Bucky is sitting on the floor, legs crossed in front of him, and one of Steve’s sketchbooks is open in his lap. Steve thinks nothing of it, for a moment, before he notices  _which_  sketchbook, and then his heart stops.  
   
Everything slows down, as Bucky looks up at him with a furrowed brow, pages against his jeans of drawings of himself. One of him sleeping shirtless with a teddy bear grasped in his arms; another, horrifyingly, of him at the beach, in a tight pair of swim trunks with water droplets leaving trails down his muscled chest and an unmistakably seductive look in his eyes. Steve had drawn that one last summer, after they did spend a day at the beach together, but the look in Bucky’s eyes hadn’t been for Steve. He’d spotted a pretty redhead playing volleyball with her friends and spent most of the afternoon flirting with her while Steve fumed silently off to the side. When he got home, he’d imagined what it would feel like to have Bucky’s attention on  _him_ like that, and sketched it, and then had a vivid dream that he’s still ashamed of.  
   
Steve can’t speak, as Bucky looks back down at the book and turns the page. He’s nude in the next one, turned away and looking over his shoulder, the lines of his back and thighs detailed and exquisite. Steve had been proud of that one, when he did it. Now he’s sickened by it. His best friend, and he’s been treating him like cheap porn and never even thought to ask if it was okay.  
   
“What is this?” Bucky asks quietly.  
   
Steve can’t read his voice, can’t tell if Bucky’s furious or disgusted. He croaks out, “I’m sorry.”  
   
Bucky looks up again. “What are you sorry for?” he asks, measured and calculated, and he’s right. That Steve’s sorry isn’t important, it matters  _why_ , and Steve can’t tell him.  
   
“I won’t … I’ll throw them out, okay? I won’t do it anymore. I’m sorry, Buck, I know it’s fucked up.” Steve can’t feel his hands, or his face. His tongue feels huge and clumsy in his mouth, and his heart races so fast it leaves him queasy.  
   
“Why?”  
   
“Why – why what?”  
   
“Why did you draw these?” Bucky tilts his head to one side. “I mean, they’re good. You were always talented. But …”  
   
“I dropped out,” Steve blurts out, instead of answering the question. “Of Tisch.”  
   
Bucky blinks. His eyes widen and his mouth drops open. “You  _what_? When?!”  
   
“Just … just after I got back. From Pittsburgh. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”  
   
Bucky shakes his head, mouth still open, like he’s trying to process the information and can’t. “That was  _weeks_ ago! Where the fuck have you been going every day?”  
   
“I got a job,” Steve tells him weakly. “So I can help, I can buy groceries and stuff or pay the electric bill – ”  
   
“Steve,” Bucky cuts him off. He shuts the sketchbook and pushes it off his lap, and then brings his hand up to rub over his face. “Steve, I swear to God, if you dropped out because you thought I’m bothered about paying for stuff – ”  
   
“No.” Steve shakes his head. Hot, shameful tears spill down his cheeks. Bucky’s already angry, so he might as well be honest. Nothing left to lose now. “I dropped out because I was gonna have to do a bunch of extra work to make up for the time I missed, and I didn’t want to! I wanted to be here with you instead, you’re more important than a stupid, useless art degree, and you needed me, and …”  
   
The words die in his throat as he realizes how meaningless they are. Bucky doesn’t need him. Bucky’s never needed him.  
   
“Because of me,” Bucky surmises, reacting exactly how Steve knew he would. “You dropped out because of me.”  
   
“Not  _because_ of you,” Steve argues, but he doesn’t know how to better explain it.  
   
Bucky gets up, and brushes past Steve as he walks from the room and back down the hall. Steve covers his face with his hands and struggles to hold back a sob that wants to break free and echo around the room. He wants to scream and cry and maybe throw himself off the Brooklyn Bridge.  
   
“I remembered.”  
   
Steve looks up. Bucky is out of sight, but he can hear his voice from the living room. Forcing his feet to move, Steve goes to him. Bucky’s on the couch, leaned over with his elbow resting on his knee. He looks up, when Steve comes in, and his cheeks are red.  
   
“Remembered what?” Steve barely dares to ask.  
   
“I wasn’t snooping,” Bucky says. It isn’t an answer. “I went in your room because I couldn’t find my red hoodie and I thought maybe it got mixed up with your stuff in the wash. That book was in the drawer with your sweatshirts.”  
   
“I don’t think I’d have any right to be mad about that, given what you … saw.” Steve’s voice sounds utterly miserable in his own ears, and Bucky exhales and nods a little.  
   
“Why did you … I was fully naked in a few of those, Steve. You imagined what my … why?”  
   
Steve shakes his head. He tries, he wants to, because Bucky deserves an honest answer, but he can’t. Not when three simple words could destroy the best friendship he’s ever known. He’s selfish, but he needs Bucky in his life. Even if lying to him is how Steve keeps him there. “What did you remember?”  
   
“The accident. Why I was out there with Jeff, on that fucking highway.”  
   
Steve doesn’t ask. Bucky’s eyes glisten, and Steve wants to ask, but he’s frozen to the spot and his mouth doesn’t work anymore.  
   
“He caught me crying in the showers, after practice, after everyone else had gone home.” Bucky sniffs and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “I’d … figured some stuff out. Or I was trying to, anyway. Some stuff about me. Stuff about … who I am. Who I wanna be with. But it was a mess, it’s still a mess. We weren’t going anywhere, we were just driving. He just put me in his car and started driving, letting me talk it all out. I unloaded all over him, all kinds of shit about being with girls because I thought I was supposed to be and freaking out when I realized what I really wanted. And that it was never, ever gonna happen because he wouldn’t want me back.”  
   
Steve’s heart stops all over again. The nausea increases, to the point that he has to grip the doorframe to steady himself.  
   
Bucky looks up at him, tears shining in his eyes. “So it was my fault. We were out there because of me, because he was trying to help me.”  
   
“No.” Steve shakes his head.  
   
“And now you. You’ve wanted for years to get into that school, and you quit because of me.”  
   
“ _No_ ,” Steve repeats, desperate,  _desperate_ to make Bucky understand.  
   
“Why did you draw me like that?”  
   
“Buck.”  
   
“I deserve an answer, Steve.”  
   
“Because I’m in love with you.” Steve admits it, and the words hurt on their way out like daggers, and then they’re free, out in the world, where they can be stolen and squeezed and smashed into a million pieces.  
   
Bucky stands up. He walks over, slow steps at first and then quicker ones, until he’s right in front of Steve. He grabs Steve by a handful of his shirt and pulls him into a kiss.  
   
*           *           *


	7. Chapter 7

Steve gasps into it. He doesn’t expect it so it almost knocks him over, and then on instinct he throws his arms around Bucky’s neck to pull him closer. Fumbling, unsure of himself but clinging to this daydream on the good chance he’ll wake up any second and lose it forever. It’s everything, it’s something he’s dreamed about so many times but could have never, in his wildest fantasies, imagine the way it would actually feel. Bucky kisses him like he wants to eat Steve alive, to fuse their souls together so they can’t exist anymore as separate entities. Steve whimpers into it, dizzy with the force of it as it washes over him.  
   
Bucky backs him up, pushing Steve against the wall, his head knocking back into it. Steve makes another noise, small and pitiful, and opens his mouth to let Bucky’s tongue dip in. He’s so unpracticed, clumsy and aware of it, but he can’t stop, can’t control the spiral that sends his head into a spin and sets his skin on fire.  
   
“Whoa, slow down,” Bucky says to him, chuckling softly, maybe talking to himself as much as to Steve. He’s still holding so tight around Steve’s waist, keeping him pressed in close. Steve wants to crawl into his skin. Bucky smiles at him, eyes sparkling. It’s the most beautiful thing Steve’s ever seen, more stunning that a hundred sunsets and a thousand glittery rainstorms. He kisses Steve again, softer this time, just a gentle, lingering press of his lips.  
   
“You’re not mad at me?”  
   
“You bet your ass I’m mad at you. You are reapplying to that school in the Fall, and you’re getting in, and you’re becoming a famous artist. I’m not letting you waste away in some minimum wage job just because I got hurt. Those drawings … Steve, they’re so good. I mean,” Bucky laughs again, “it was a bit weird looking at my own dick on a page.”  
   
Steve groans in embarrassment and drops his head onto Bucky’s chest. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”  
   
“Probably not,” Bucky agrees. “But I don’t mind.”  
   
“Really?”  
   
“You know it’s you, right?”  
   
“What’s me?”  
   
“The one I was upset over.” Bucky dips down to kiss Steve’s cheek, mouthing along his skin. “The one I thought would never want me back.”  
   
Steve doesn’t understand how that could be possible. His head won’t make sense of it. Not when Bucky is so golden, and Steve is so ordinary and unimpressive and not someone anyone should ever bother being upset over. Steve also can’t believe he managed to hide his feelings so well from Bucky that Bucky didn’t know about them, when he failed so miserably at hiding them from everybody else.  
   
“You’re thinking,” Bucky whispers. He’s so warm, his whole body against Steve’s in one long line. Steve wants to be wrapped up in him and never come back out.  
   
“I didn’t expect this,” Steve admits. “Thought I’d just be pathetically pining after you for the rest of my life.”  
   
“I’m in love with you, too,” Bucky says, and Steve hadn’t realized Bucky hadn’t said it back until he does. It lights him up like fireworks, like a burst of flames in his chest. “Come sit down, you look like you’re gonna fall over.”  
   
“I might,” Steve agrees, but lets Bucky lead him back to the couch. He sits, and Bucky sits close; close enough to smell him, to feel the heat radiating off him. When he looks up, Bucky’s smile is tentative, and that sends him spinning all over again. The idea that this incredible, beautiful boy is nervous around  _Steve_ is more than his mind can wrap itself around.  
   
“How long?” Bucky asks. “Have you …?”  
   
“I don’t know.” Steve licks his lips and shakes his head. “Feels like forever. I can’t pinpoint an exact moment when I realized. I just … can’t remember not loving you.”  
   
“Stevie,” Bucky murmurs. He looks overwhelmed by it, and he leans in for another kiss. His lips are just as sweet as Steve always imagined. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”  
   
“You didn’t tell me either. Didn’t … wanna lose you, if you didn’t feel it back.”  
   
“Neither did I. I can’t believe you never noticed, I was always so worried I was shit at hiding it.”  
   
“You really do?”  
   
“Yeah. I really do.” Bucky’s hand trails up Steve’s arm. He shivers.  
   
Another kiss is slower, deeper, less frantic but more meaningful, and Steve feels it down to his toes and the tips of his fingers.  
   
“Have you …” Bucky hesitates for a moment. “Done … much?”  
   
Steve gets his meaning, and flushes all the way down his chest. His whole body goes warm, and embarrassed, and ashamed that he has to answer honestly. “I’ve barely even kissed anybody, Buck. No one wants me.”  
   
Bucky frowns. He shifts in closer, cupping Steve’s cheek in his hand. Steve turns his face into it, hiding in it. “Not true. I want you.”  
   
Steve squeezes his eyes shut. He’s dizzy again, half in a good way, and half not. He shakes his head, and Bucky moves in even closer.  
   
“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” He tips forward, resting his forehead against Steve’s hair. “It’s okay, we don’t have to do anything.”  
   
Steve shakes his head again. “It’s not that.”  
   
“Tell me, then?”  
   
“I’m just. I’ve wanted this for so long, and I never thought it would happen, and you’re …  _you_. I’m scared I’ll be a disappointment.”  
   
“Never,” Bucky murmurs to him. “Never, babydoll. You’re  _you_. And you could never disappoint me. Besides, I’m the one missing an arm. If anyone should be worried about being disappointing …”  
   
There’s a lilt to his voice, like he’s joking, but Steve can tell he isn’t. It hurts him deep in his gut to think of Bucky not knowing how perfect he’s always been in Steve’s eyes.  
   
“Can I see it?”  
   
Bucky exhales slowly.  
   
Steve reaches up to brush the backs of his knuckles over Bucky’s cheek, and kisses the corner of his mouth. “I have loved you every minute of my whole life. If you think you’re not beautiful anymore because of this … you’re just wrong, Buck. You’re so wrong.”  
   
Bucky nods. He takes a deep breath and sits up a little so he can lift the bottom of his shirt. Steve helps him get it off, pulling it up over Bucky’s hair and discarding it on the floor. Bucky’s face and neck are flushed, glowing pink in the low light, and he looks nervous, and it makes Steve’s heart throb uncomfortably. He smiles reassuringly, before he moves his gaze to Bucky’s shoulder. He touches, gently, moving light fingertips over the scarring.  
   
“Does it still hurt?”  
   
Bucky shakes his head. “Not really. Only when I think about it.”  
   
Steve leans forward to lay a kiss on one of the deeper scars. Bucky’s hand cups the back of his head, fingers sliding through Steve’s hair. When he looks up again, Bucky’s eyes are a little misty. So it’s fair, Steve tugs his own shirt off, a hot wave of discomfort running through him even though this is far from the first time Bucky’s seen his shirtless.  
   
“I don’t know who ever told you that you’re not gorgeous,” Bucky says softly to him, tipping Steve’s chin up with a bent finger. “But they were wrong, too. You are.”  
   
Steve manages a smile. He believes it a little, when Bucky says it.  
   
“Used to …” Bucky chuckles and drops his head, suddenly shy. “Well.”  
   
“Used to what?”  
   
“Think about you. In the shower, or … when I was, y’know.” He makes a crude motion between their bodies. “Then I’d hate myself over it. Rush off to find a girl to make out with, to erase it.”  
   
Steve rises up on his knees and crawls over Bucky’s lap. Leans forward against him, bare chests pressed together, tucking his hands behind Bucky’s back on the couch and his nose into Bucky’s shoulder. “Me too,” he admits. “Except without the part about the girl.”  
   
“Might try it again,” Bucky says. “Also without the part about the girl. ‘Specially since now I know what kissing you really feels like.”  
   
Steve blushes again. He’s glad his face is hidden. “What do we … do?”  
   
“Whatever you want. Even if it’s just this.” Bucky kisses his hair. “This is nice. I like you in my lap.”  
   
“I meant … long-term.” Steve likes it too, though. Bucky is warm and solid underneath him, and he’s wanted for so long to be held by him. “Say … something happens tonight. Then what? What happens tomorrow?”  
   
“Anything. Everything.” Bucky nudges him, urging Steve’s face up so he can press a soft kiss to his lips. “I’m in love with you. You mean everything to me, Steve, always have. You can have me any way you want, for as long as you want. If that means just tonight, that’s okay. If it means we’ll be together when we’re 90, that’s good too.”  
   
Steve shivers a little, and Bucky’s arm tightens around him. “90?”  
   
“I could’ve died, on that highway. I could’ve …” Bucky’s voice cracks, and he swallows. “Could’ve never got to tell you. Never got to kiss you and have you against me like this. Life can be shorter than you think it’s gonna be. So yeah, I want you every day for the rest of mine. However long that is. If … if that’s what you want.”  
   
“I want everything,” Steve confesses. “I don’t know if I’ll be any good at any of it, but I want it.”  
   
“You know I’ve never … I’ve done stuff, with girls, but never all the way.”  
   
Steve hadn’t known that. He always assumed Bucky just spared him the details of his dates.  
   
“So if we ever get to that … not that we have to, but if we want to … we’re in the same boat. My first time, too.”  
   
Steve nods. He didn’t need that, he would have been fine if it weren’t the case, but he likes it. Likes knowing he’ll be the one Bucky gives that to, when so many others have wanted it over the years.  
   
The smile Bucky gives him is small but genuine, and Steve melts against him in another kiss. Bucky’s hand cups his midsection, fingers curling around his ribcage and squeezing. It feels like more, this time, and Steve’s skin prickles. His heartbeat picks up, the rush of arousal leaving him light-headed. The air around them feels heavy and warm, the heat between them wrapping around Steve like a blanket. Bucky’s tongue moves, licks into his mouth, languid and life-changing.  
   
Steve rocks into him, his hips moving on their own without permission from his brain, accidentally rubbing his crotch against Bucky’s stomach and gasping at the friction. “Sorry,” he mumbles, trying to sit back so there’s space between them again, but Bucky doesn’t let him.  
   
“Can I touch you?” he whispers, pupils expanded to cover almost all the blue in his eyes.  
   
Steve struggles to breathe properly, and nods.  
   
Bucky’s hand slides around, lingering over the button on Steve’s jeans. Steve undoes his own pants before Bucky can, to reiterate he wants it. He wants it so much the room is spinning. Bucky’s hand slides into Steve’s boxers, fingers white hot against his flesh. He curls his fingers around Steve’s erection, getting it out enough to stroke it slowly. Steve closes his eyes, and just feels. Just lets the sensation wash over him, lets it warm him from the inside, lets it explode glitter behind his eyes. It’s so much better than when he touches himself. Bucky’s hand moves in ways Steve can’t predict, thumb pressing under the head, palm sliding over it, spreading around the moisture beading at the tip.  
   
Bucky is murmuring to him, and it takes Steve a minute to come back to himself to understand the words. “So gorgeous,” he’s saying, “look at you, baby. Gonna get addicted to this real fast.”  
   
“Bucky,” Steve whispers, and Bucky moans softly.  
   
“That, too. Not ready for you sayin’ my name like that.”  
   
Steve feels crazy, head swimming and pleasure thrumming through his veins. He wants to touch, too, aches for it, so he reaches between them to feel Bucky hard in his sweatpants. Bucky swears and tips his head back onto the couch, putting the long line of his neck on display and Steve can’t resist it, has to attach his lips to it. Bucky squirms underneath him, his hand stilling against Steve as he’s distracted, and Steve takes advantage, pushes his own hand into Bucky’s sweats and finds his cock, hard but silky smooth. He touches, mirroring what Bucky had done to him, pulling delicious moans from him that leave Steve feeling drunk.  
   
Bucky comes back to himself after a moment and lifts his head up again to capture Steve’s lips in a hard kiss. “Feels so fuckin’ good, Stevie.”  
   
“Yeah?” Steve asks, shy and unsure but so consumed with want it’s difficult to take in an adequate breath.  
   
“You gotta tell me everything you like.” Bucky’s hand finds Steve’s erection again, stroking faster this time, pulling him dangerously close to that edge and then backing off, and then doing it again. “Maybe not this time, not gonna fuckin’ last this time, but I wanna know everything. Every place you like to be touched, every sensitive spot, every way to get you begging me to let you come.”  
   
“Oh fuck,” Steve moans. His forehead rests against Bucky’s, sharing air with him. If he survives this, he wants that too. He doesn’t know those things himself. Doesn’t have experience with anyone else to draw on. They’ll have to figure it all out, together. “Just keep doing that.”  
   
Bucky grins against Steve’s mouth, and quickens the pace of his hand. Steve’s cheeks burn, hands shaking against Bucky as he’s drawn to the edge again and this time Bucky doesn’t stop. He keeps stroking until Steve crashes, muscles clenching and spilling over Bucky’s fingers as the orgasm hits him in slow, exquisite waves. It seems to last forever, hitting him again with aftershocks just when he finally thinks its over. He twitches and he can hear himself moaning, hear Bucky chuckling satisfactorily and pressing kisses to Steve’s open mouth.  
   
Steve doesn’t wait, the moment he’s with it enough to move he does, scrambling backwards off Bucky’s lap and settling on the floor between his feet. Bucky stares at him, eyes heavy-lidded again and chest rising and falling quickly as Steve tugs his sweats down and leans forward, taking the head of Bucky’s cock into his mouth. A burst of salt hits his tongue and he moans around it, slides down, lets it force his jaw open wider.  
   
Bucky swears and his fingers pet through Steve’s hair, somehow gentle and rough at the same time, urging Steve on. Steve fumbles through it, no idea what he’s doing but drawing gorgeous moans from Bucky so he must be doing it right.  
   
“Gonna …” Bucky warns, tugging at Steve’s hair. “Fuck, Steve, I’m …”  
   
Steve pulls off, replacing his mouth with his hand but still licking at the base of Bucky’s cock under his fingers. He jerks him quick, only a few pulls before Bucky’s tensing underneath him, and Steve watches, re-aroused and fascinated, as ropes of white spill from the pink tip of Bucky’s dick and leave streaks on his trembling stomach.  
   
Bucky laughs when it stops, rubbing his hand over his face and smiling like he’s never been happier. He looks down at Steve, turning that sunshine smile to him, and Steve feels like he might be visibly glowing. He did that, he made Bucky feel good, made him come, made him  _happy_. It’s an intense, vivid high that Steve’s not sure he’ll ever get used to.  
   
“Get up here,” Bucky grins at him, pulling on Steve’s hand. Steve crawls back onto him, and Bucky kisses him, so tenderly Steve might burst into tears if he didn’t still have the afterglow pulsing thick through him. “I could probably do that every day until we’re 90. What d’you think?”  
   
Steve nods. He can’t smile, he’s still feeling it all too much, but he rests his head on Bucky’s shoulder and soaks it in. “Yeah. That sounds pretty good.”  
   
*           *           *  
   
_Six months later_  
   
“You’re gonna be late,” Bucky calls to him from the kitchen.  
   
Steve knows he is. He spits toothpaste into the sink and rinses his mouth out quickly. His hair is a mess, but what else is new. He doesn’t really care. It gives him that careless,  _avant garde_ artist look. Or something. Whatever excuse he can come up with to get out of caring that he’s always running late, these days, because every morning when his alarm goes off, Bucky rolls over and groans about  _five more minutes_ and pulls Steve back into bed. It’s never only five minutes, and it regularly devolves from cuddling to stale morning kisses and rubbing warm, sleepy bodies against each other. Bucky is a dick to nag him about being late, when it’s always his fault that Steve is.  
   
He trips over the bathmat, but manages not to fall. Bucky is shirtless in the kitchen when Steve walks into it, grey sweats slung low on his hips. His hair is tucked behind his ears, lips curved into a smile, blue eyes sparkling like they always do. He’s holding a paper bag in his hand, offering it out to Steve.  
   
“Made you a sandwich.”  
   
“Thank you.”  
   
Steve takes it, and Bucky pulls him in by the waist, into a deep kiss. “Be brilliant today,” he whispers against Steve’s lips.  
   
“I always am,” Steve answers, halfway as a joke, but Bucky just smiles and nuzzles his nose into Steve’s cheek.  
   
“I know you are. Love you.”  
   
“Love you too. See you at Tiptop, later? Peggy’s bringing her new girlfriend.”  
   
Bucky kisses him again, and then lets him go. Steve is only a few minutes late for his first class. It’s been worse.  
   
In the end, he hadn’t needed to reapply to Tisch. He’d spoken to an advisor, and to the Dean, finally being honest with them about what had happened. They’d been understanding, and pulled a few strings, and gotten him re-enrolled for the Fall semester. He does have to retake the classed he’d been taking in February when Bucky had been in the accident, but Steve is alright with that, now. He’s doing much better work now than he was then, anyway, because he’s happy. He was never any good at being a tortured artist who took pain and heartbreak and turned it into masterpieces. Steve’s torment just led to him being too distracted to produce anything worthwhile.  
   
Bucky went back to a therapist, a few weeks after they’d started dating. Steve hadn’t insisted on it, but had nudged him in that direction, and after a while Bucky had agreed. He’d been struggling, crying in Steve’s arms instead of alone in his bedroom, about the accident, about his feelings of guilt over the friend he lost, about not knowing what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Steve had held him and kissed him and listened as much as he could, but he had no answers. It’s been a slow process, and it’s ongoing, but Bucky is getting better, now that he’s talking to someone about it who can help him in a way Steve can’t. And he found a new calling. He was hired as an assistant coach, for the junior team he used to play on. It isn’t glamourous like playing in the NHL, but he seems to love it. He comes home with flushed cheeks and excited smiles, telling Steve about his days, and Steve could drown in happiness.  
   
A month ago, Tony Stark had offered to build Bucky a prosthetic. It came out of nowhere. Steve had no idea the billionaire even knew who they were. His tower in Manhattan dominates the skyline, and it had been the most intimidating meeting of Steve’s life. His lab looks like something out of Star Trek. Bucky had turned down a regular prosthetic, when he was first at the hospital six months ago. Steve had never asked why. He suspected it came from guilt, from Bucky believing he deserved the struggling of adapting to only one arm because he still believed the accident was his own fault. Since then, Bucky has adapted. There are still things he needs help with, but most things he can do on his own, even if he has to do them in his own unique way. Steve’s been so proud of him for that.  
   
“My tech is different,” Stark had told him. “You’ll be able to move it. We’ll attach it to your nervous system, so it will function mostly like a real arm. You won’t feel anything with it, but it’ll respond to commands from your brain.”  
   
“How does that work?” Steve had asked apprehensively.  
   
“I could explain it to you, but it’s long and complicated and boring,” Stark had answered with a dismissive shrug. “Just believe me that it does.”  
   
Bucky hadn’t said no outright. They’d thanked Stark for his time, and gone home, and he’d really thought about it. In the end, he’d turned it down. When Steve had asked why, Bucky had simply said, “because I don’t need it. He should be helping people who need his help. I don’t.”  
   
Steve had kissed him thoroughly, and told Bucky how proud he was of him, and pulled Bucky off toward their bedroom to show him how much.  
   
Natasha and Sam are already there, when Steve arrives at the bar in Brooklyn that’s become their usual meeting place. Natasha’s hair is black, the most normal color it’s been in over a year. It looks good on her, but Steve misses the crayon colors a little. They’re holding hands on the table when Steve walks in, although they let go as soon as they see him and pretend they weren’t. Steve resists rolling his eyes. He doesn’t know why they’re still pretending, but it’s their business so he doesn’t ask. One of these days, they’ll make a dramatic announcement about it, and the rest of them will have to act like they haven’t known for half a year.  
   
Sam bumps his fist, and Natasha kisses his cheek in greeting.  
   
“Where’s your other half?” Sam asks.  
   
“On his way. They have an exhibition game tomorrow, so I think practice went late this afternoon.” Steve orders a drink from a sullen waitress, and then asks, “what do we know about the new girl?”  
   
“You remember my friend Wanda?” Natasha asks, with a smile.  
   
Steve squints, and tries to. “I … maybe?”  
   
“Long red hair, great boobs.”  
   
“I must’ve missed the boobs.”  
   
Sam snorts into his drink.  
   
“Oh, she was there the night of Bucky’s accident,” Natasha adds, and then a memory does materialize in Steve’s mind.  
   
“Right, I do remember her, actually. Wait, it’s  _her_?”  
   
Natasha smirks over at Sam. “Our proper, uppity Miss Margaret Carter decided she wanted to have a little fun for once, so I set them up.”  
   
“She’s not weird, is she?”  
   
“She’s definitely weird. But super cool, and smart, and really nice. And Peggy can take care of herself, Mother Rogers.”  
   
Steve doesn’t get a chance to defend himself because Sam waves at someone behind him, and Steve looks up to see Peggy walking in, holding hands with the redhead Steve remembers from that horrible night at Natasha’s apartment. Bucky is right behind them.  
   
Peggy introduces Wanda, who smiles at them shyly. It takes Steve about four seconds to decide he likes her; making the decision the moment he sees Peggy looking at her with stars in her eyes.  
   
Bucky brings over two extra chairs, carrying them both in his one hand, so they can all sit together. Natasha and Sam immediately start arguing about appetizers. Bucky squeezes Steve’s knee under the table, and Steve takes his hand, threading their fingers together and bringing them up to kiss the back of Bucky’s palm.  
   
“Good day?” Bucky asks him quietly, so the others can’t hear.  
   
Steve nods. “I got an idea, for my midterm project. I’ll tell you about it later.”  
   
Bucky smiles, and presses a quick kiss to Steve’s lips. “Can’t wait.”  
   
*           *           *

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and thank you to my MTH bidder! <3
> 
>  
> 
> [come talk to me on tumblr if you want!](http://paper-storm.tumblr.com/)


End file.
